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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.

Bill Moyers

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

Done Fun Television
Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
BILL MOYERS

Done Journalist Reporting Truth
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
But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.
BILL MOYERS

Democratic Freedom Mean Political Social System Today
In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life – one’s own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough.
BILL MOYERS

Circles Enough Land Tribe War
I believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’ between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.
BILL MOYERS

Believe Media Trust
How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Political Soul
Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
BILL MOYERS

Freedom Hands Writing
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
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.
BILL MOYERS

Charity Commitment Justice
Barack Obama seemed to think he could win over his enemies. He certainly seemed to believe too much in his own powers of persuasion. One thing’s for sure – he misunderstood the nature of his adversaries.
BILL MOYERS

Believe Thinking Winning
The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they’ve won.
BILL MOYERS

Beach Country Hero Quater Working
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
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

Jobs People Trying
We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we’ll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we’ll not save democracy from its own inertia.
BILL MOYERS

Country Democracy Independent
Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.
BILL MOYERS

Allow Claims Democracy People
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
…there is no more effective public interest watchdog in Washington, D.C.
BILL MOYERS

Integrity Interest Public Interest
There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation.
BILL MOYERS

Animal Ark Expensive God Interception Men
Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn’t eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents.
BILL MOYERS

Children Long People
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
Although I was brought up in a culturally and religious conservative culture, as a Baptist I was taught that no one has the right to subpoena your conscience.
BILL MOYERS

Baptists Culture Religious
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
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
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
As a student I learned from wonderful teachers and ever since then I’ve thought everyone is a teacher.
BILL MOYERS

Students Teacher Teaching

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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