Journalist Quotes

I have never been attracted to any kind of violence.

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip.

I don't sit there and speculate. I'm not that sort of person. It wastes time, actually.

I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

If I'm in danger then it's usually my fault and it's up to me to get myself out of it. I am not in it just to get an adrenalin rush. No way!

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.

There are plenty of good five cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter.

The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

Middle age occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.

Christmas is over and Business is Business.

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

There must be a day or two in a man's life when he is the precise age for something important.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

Too much truth is uncouth.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.

You can be a great reporter and not be such a great talk show host.

They can say I have an opinion about something.

Supreme Court arguments and decisions are fascinating to a few of us and really pretty boring to most.

I think that in the end, a talk show is a very different animal.

I think by laying it out for the viewer I'm avoiding the issue of bias.

I read our emails every day and I know there are people out there who think I'm awful.

Certainly the O.J. Simpson case was a turning point in my career.