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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

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
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
Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us.
BILL MOYERS

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

Civilization People Reciprocity
If the watchdog doesn’t bark, how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.
BILL MOYERS

Bark Basements Supposed
Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
BILL MOYERS

Country Government Mean
Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls ‘The Patriot’s Dream.
BILL MOYERS

Blood Dream Fighting
Witness the coupling of news and entertainment. See everyday people cast overboard as the pirates and predators of Wall Street seized the ship of state. I didn’t drift; I moved left just by standing still.
BILL MOYERS

Moving Overboard Predator Standing
Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.
BILL MOYERS

Ethics People Stranger
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 thing about war is that once it’s triggered, it is unyielding in its appetite. And the more it consumes and gorges, the more it wants.
BILL MOYERS

Gorges Unyielding War
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
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
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.
BILL MOYERS

Ignorance Party Political
Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.
BILL MOYERS

Allow Claims Democracy 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

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Moyers Quotes