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We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples.

Bill Moyers

What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths – half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.
BILL MOYERS

Informed Opinion Perhaps Political
Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.
BILL MOYERS

Government Long Running
Why is the country not having this conversation, the kind of conversation that requires the politicians who are responsible for the war to be specific to the concerns of the American people.
BILL MOYERS

Country People War
I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity.
BILL MOYERS

Civilization People Reciprocity
Journalism’s been a continuing course in adult education for me.
BILL MOYERS

Adults Continuing Journalism
There’s hardly a more bitter pill to take than when a President disappoints the people who most believed in him.
BILL MOYERS

People Pills President
Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.
BILL MOYERS

Block Democracy Long
Charity is commendable; everyone should be charitable. But justice aims to create a social order in which, if individuals choose not to be charitable, people still don’t go hungry, unschooled or sick without care.
BILL MOYERS

Commitment Order Sick
America is the longest argument in the world.
BILL MOYERS

Argument Country World
Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it’s marinated in humor.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Mark Veins
Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society.
BILL MOYERS

Citizen Ordinary Struggle
We don’t care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.
BILL MOYERS

Care Children Television
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.
BILL MOYERS

People Struggle Taken
There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians – they stay bought.
BILL MOYERS

Honest Journalist Politician
We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples.
BILL MOYERS

Reality Thinking Views
When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Library Matter
People who don’t believe in government are likely to defy our government.
BILL MOYERS

Believe Government People
The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it’s very limited in what it can do logically. It’s an existential experience – there and then gone.
BILL MOYERS

Commitment Gone Information
The delusional is no longer marginal.
BILL MOYERS

Delusional Marginal People Person
In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a “war on terror” – exactly what, pray tell, is that?
BILL MOYERS

Mind Police Tracking War
The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle and it’s going to crash.
BILL MOYERS

Bargain Ease Longer Ordinary People
A people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
BILL MOYERS

Die Less People Questions Skeptical
You can’t have a people’s democracy as long as corporations are considered people.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Long People
An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias.
BILL MOYERS

Fighting Lying Media
We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
BILL MOYERS

Knows More President
Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.
BILL MOYERS

Allow Claims Democracy People
The President may not be listening, but the Senate is, and the public won this round. The House has a similar resolution under consideration.
BILL MOYERS

Consideration President Resolution Round

We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples.

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We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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