black
grey
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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

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
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
Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.
BILL MOYERS

Arrows Ideas Motivational
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
Our children are being raised by appliances.
BILL MOYERS

Appliances Children Raised
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
They’re counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They’re counting on you to be standing at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket!
BILL MOYERS

Hands Heart Over
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
Journalism’s been a continuing course in adult education for me.
BILL MOYERS

Adults Continuing Journalism
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
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
Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means – what it bestows on us.
BILL MOYERS

Issues Mean Revolutionary Ideas
Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government.
BILL MOYERS

Government Running White
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
Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
BILL MOYERS

Country Government Mean
Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.
BILL MOYERS

Facts Ideas Life Static
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
An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias.
BILL MOYERS

Fighting Lying Media
Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.
BILL MOYERS

Block Democracy Long
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
War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
BILL MOYERS

Imagination Self War
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
Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House – as Brutus loved Caesar.
BILL MOYERS

Afternoon House Limit Term
Television can stir emotions, but it doesn’t invite reflection as much as the printed page.
BILL MOYERS

Pages Reflection Television
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
News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.
BILL MOYERS

News People Want

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Moyers Quotes