Jim Lehrer Quotes

I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.

I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

I'm not in the being-annoyed business.

I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

I'm a journalist and that's what I do.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

I started as a print reporter.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

I came from a family of Marines into the family of Marines.

I believe an invitation from the Commission on Presidential Debates is similar to a draft notice - a civic responsibility.

I always wear blue shirts and I like wine or purple ties.

Everyone should get their news however they want to and in whatever form they want. I'm not going to sit back in judgment of other people and the way they do it.

Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

A skill required to be president is to explain to the American people any given thing they do.

A debate has one purpose, one purpose only, and that is to facilitate the exchange of ideas directly between two candidates, and that's it.

You want to see an angry person? Let me hear a cell phone go off.

There's only one interview technique that matters... Do your homework so you can listen to the answers and react to them and ask follow-ups. Do your homework, prepare.

My Marine experience helped shape who I am now personally and professionally, and I am grateful for that on an almost daily basis.

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.

I'm in the reporting part of journalism.

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid. I look at bus driving through the eyes of a little boy. I see it as glamorous.

People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry.