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Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.

Bill Moyers

When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
BILL MOYERS

Always Blind Fact Ideology Politicians
The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Media Quality
Television is a medium. It is neither rare nor well done.
BILL MOYERS

Done Fun Television
I was not a public – I was not a thinker. I was a doer.
BILL MOYERS

Doers Public Thinkers
The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back.
BILL MOYERS

Empires Media Radio
News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.
BILL MOYERS

News People Want
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
War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
BILL MOYERS

Imagination Self War
Beauty is an expression of that rapture of being alive.
BILL MOYERS

Alive Beauty Expression
I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit.
BILL MOYERS

Out Rivers Sacrifice Work
We 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.
BILL MOYERS

Comfort Lying Reality
The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in the election and it’s changing the conversation.
BILL MOYERS

Country Election Fault History
When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together.
BILL MOYERS

Giving Grow Up Together
You do it because there’s a story to be told. I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.
BILL MOYERS

Complicated Job People Told Truth Trying
I really believe that coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.
BILL MOYERS

Believe Fate Spiritual
Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Heart Voting
Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions – the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who’d rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.
BILL MOYERS

Country Law Men President Strong
An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias.
BILL MOYERS

Fighting Lying Media
America’s corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they’re privatizing democracy. All the benefits – the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.
BILL MOYERS

Country Cutting Direction One
Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.
BILL MOYERS

Country Hyperbole Johnson Oxygen
…there is no more effective public interest watchdog in Washington, D.C.
BILL MOYERS

Integrity Interest Public Interest
I’m angry at what’s happening to America and angry with myself that I can’t do more. I would be miserable if I couldn’t bear witness.
BILL MOYERS

Angry Bears Country
It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.
BILL MOYERS

Grassroots People Thinking
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.
BILL MOYERS

Determine Embedded Moral Quiet Street
Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.
BILL MOYERS

Media Political Protection
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 MOYERS

Believe Couple Heart
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does.
BILL MOYERS

Causes Doe Fighting

Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.

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Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.

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Popular Authors

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