Bob Edwards Quotes

Public radio has always been so powerless.

People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.

Nobody cares about your wardrobe, what your tie looks like, or even if you're wearing one, and I don't.

Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.

It's also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one's brain. There are no pictures to distract.

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.

I've never been able to predict the future of anything.

I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

I'm a very straight-laced, conservative news kind of guy.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

I wanted to be one of the voices in the box.

I wake about 1 a.m. I'm in the office by 2 a.m. We're on the air at 5.

I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.

I think we're doing the right things for the right reasons. We're not doing it to sell products. We're not doing it to be popular. We're doing it because in our judgment these stories are important to do, and at this length and this much depth.

I got to know every format of every station and who was on and what time.

I go home by noon, and I'm in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.

But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.

Any outfit that has to beg its listeners for money is an organization that has to constantly please its listeners or it will dry up and go away. It shouldn't work when you think about it.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.

Good things just keep happening.