When we were covering the 2008 campaign I told my young African American colleagues that despite the historical significance of victory, Barack Obama was going to break their hearts.
BILL MOYERSWe seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.
More Bill Moyers Quotes
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The delusional is no longer marginal.
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When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
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People who don’t believe in government are likely to defy our government.
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Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.
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Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
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In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That’s why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.
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Charity provides crumbs from the table; justice offers a place at the table.
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How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
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I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.
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Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality.
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Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.
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The struggle of ordinary people for a decent living, for security, is as old as the republic, but it’s taken on a new and urgent edge. Instead of shared prosperity our political system has now produced a winner-take-all economy.
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To the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.
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Unless you’re willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of bias, there’s no use even trying.
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I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined … .
BILL MOYERS