Top 100 Tom Brokaw Quotes
#1. Washington tends to be full of too many traps. I think reporters there do a lot of attending news briefings and news conferences expecting to get the real news out of those relatively sterile environments. But you've got to deal with the obscure people as well as the names.
Tom Brokaw
#2. I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.
Tom Brokaw
#3. I always think there are people looking not so much for information as for reassurance and reaffirmation of their views.
Tom Brokaw
#4. My own strong feeling was that the gay liberation movement really got national attraction in the truest sense of the word later in the '70s, in the '80s, and especially in the '90s.
Tom Brokaw
#5. It doesn't do any good to wire the world if we short circuit the soul.
Tom Brokaw
#6. Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.
Tom Brokaw
#7. One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children.
Tom Brokaw
#8. I would say that we have not completely cracked the code of the '60s. We are still finding our way through that time.
Tom Brokaw
#9. When you run in places you visit, you encounter things you'd never see otherwise.
Tom Brokaw
#10. The daunting task of being a mother, a wife, and an independent career or professional person is really taxing.
Tom Brokaw
#11. Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling.
Tom Brokaw
#12. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high.
Tom Brokaw
#13. What we have to do is put this in a coherent form for them at the end of the day, and on the big events, give them the kind of context that they deserve.
Tom Brokaw
#14. You will not get a Google alert when you fall in love.
Tom Brokaw
#15. The favourite bumper sticker in Washington D.C. right now is one that says 'First Iraq, then France'
Tom Brokaw
#16. I had good care going. I had Meredith and the family. And I didn't want to become the object of some kind of pity, most of all. I didn't want to show up on the Internet, 'Tom Brokaw has cancer.'
Tom Brokaw
#17. I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away.
Tom Brokaw
#18. It is not enough to wire the world if you short-circuit the soul. Technology without heart is not enough.
Tom Brokaw
#19. Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case. I really thought that was outrageous that she was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a strong but thoughtful way.
Tom Brokaw
#20. People are beginning to doubt the moral certitude of people on the right, especially the far right.
Tom Brokaw
#21. In our family, where we began with no money, we like to say that we have discovered that God invented money so those who have it can help others.
Tom Brokaw
#22. Sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.
Tom Brokaw
#23. We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars - against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.
Tom Brokaw
#24. Cable penetrates 70 percent of American audiences now.
Tom Brokaw
#25. We lost our way and allowed greed and excess to become the twin pillars of too much of the financial culture. We became a society utterly absorbed in consumption and dismissive of moderation.
Tom Brokaw
#26. I wanted to see what was going on in the world. I sometimes think I overwished.
Tom Brokaw
#27. People do not like to have their favorite myths of idols challenged and as a rule I think that the public does not like bad news.
Tom Brokaw
#28. I was a college dropout, hitchhiking across the Midwest. That was part of the old, adventurous spirit.
Tom Brokaw
#29. In the seasons of life, I have had more than my share of summers.
Tom Brokaw
#30. These are the dilemmas for cancer patients. Who and what to believe? A particular treatment is not foolproof, or as many medical experts remind us, is not math, with a fixed and certain outcome.
Tom Brokaw
#31. Originally, the main purpose of the convention was to determine who the party would have as the presidential nominee and the vice-presidential nominee.
Tom Brokaw
#32. I had gone to all the big stories of the '80s, which was one of the most fertile times in American journalism, around the world and here as well.
Tom Brokaw
#33. Gerald Ford brought to the political arena no demons, no hidden agenda, no hit list or acts of vengeance. He knew who he was, and he didn't require consultants or gurus to change him.
Tom Brokaw
#34. Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away.
Tom Brokaw
#35. Established a thriving medical practice and was a fixture at our high school sports games. He never spoke to any of us of the horrors he had seen. When one of his sons wore as a casual jacket one of Doc Auld's Army coats with the major's insignia still attached, I remember thinking,
Tom Brokaw
#36. Don't be afraid to do something unconventional, to take a chance, to risk something.
Tom Brokaw
#37. It's not the questions that get us in trouble - it's the answers ...
Tom Brokaw
#38. One of the advantages of being a national journalist of some recognition is that you come across high-profile people, and many become your friends.
Tom Brokaw
#39. Continuous coverage of the war in the Persian Gulf will resume in a moment.
Tom Brokaw
#40. During World War II, law-abiding Japanese-American citizens were herded into remote internment camps, losing their jobs, businesses and social standing, while an all-Japanese-American division fought heroically in Europe.
Tom Brokaw
#41. Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.
Tom Brokaw
#42. What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News that's quite outrageous.
Tom Brokaw
#43. Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'
Tom Brokaw
#44. It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.
Tom Brokaw
#45. 1920 was an auspicious year for a young person to enter the world as an American citizen.
Tom Brokaw
#46. You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw
#47. My mentor in the transition from the old Gabriel Heatter and John Cameron Swayze way of doing things was David Brinkley. He brought an entirely different style to what we were doing.
Tom Brokaw
#48. Sometime in the early Seventies, gender-free toys were briefly a popular idea. So at Christmas on the California beach in 1972, we downplayed the dolls with frilly dresses and loaded up Santa's sack with toy trucks and earth movers for our three daughters.
Tom Brokaw
#49. Bob Hope was an entertainment colossus, shrewd and influential well beyond show business. Richard Zoglin's biography captures it all
the public and private Hope.
Tom Brokaw
#50. In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early '60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war.
Tom Brokaw
#51. I was on the board of the Mayo Clinic. I was diagnosed there, and I could pick up the phone and get a hold of whoever I wanted to. What I learned is that you really have to get proactive and manage your case.
Tom Brokaw
#52. I've interviewed presidents and royalty, rock stars and movie stars, famous generals and captains of industry; I've had front row seats at Super Bowls, World Series, and Olympic Games; my books have been on best-seller lists, and my marriage is a long-running success.
Tom Brokaw
#53. I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.
Tom Brokaw
#54. In Los Angeles, I had the good fortune of anchoring the news right before Johnny Carson came on, so to see him, the Hollywood stars watched me first.
Tom Brokaw
#56. Peter will have a place in this brotherhood forever.
Tom Brokaw
#57. I was still in college when 'To Kill a Mockingbird' came out in 1960. I remember it had a kind of an electrifying effect on this country; this was a time when there were a lot of good books coming out.
Tom Brokaw
#58. Ratings to me are a little like the Chinese Government. I don't fully understand what makes a rating go. I don't know what makes the American television audience respond to one person and not t another. There very seldom are great differences between many television personalities.
Tom Brokaw
#59. In 1989, a lone and still-anonymous Chinese student stood unarmed in front of a Chinese tank and gave the world an enduring image of the determination of China's young to change their nation. He didn't text message the tank or share a video on YouTube.
Tom Brokaw
#60. I'm a working journalist. I'm interested in all points of view, and I draw conclusions based on facts, not just on opinions.
Tom Brokaw
#61. ABC wouldn't be a player in the news major leagues until the 1970s, when Roone Arledge brought to ABC News the energy and programming approach he had applied to ABC Sports.
Tom Brokaw
#62. You will not solve global climate change by hitting the delete button.
Tom Brokaw
#63. I don't like to play the macho card, but I grew up in a working-class family and a working-class culture.
Tom Brokaw
#64. I was at MSNBC; I was constantly saying to them during Bridgegate, 'You've convicted Governor Christie without one iota of fact attaching him to the decision to stall the traffic on the bridge. Why don't we wait until the federal government or the state government ... completes its investigation.'
Tom Brokaw
#65. It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw
#66. The disquieting news of Danny Villanueva's death brought back memories of our time together at KNBC in the early 1970s.
Tom Brokaw
#67. What was that World War I saying, "Trust the Lord and pass the ammo"? For me, trust the doctors and the Lord and pass the Velcade, Revlimid, dexamethasone.
Tom Brokaw
#68. It's so much easier to do it right than to do it wrong.
Tom Brokaw
#69. David Brinkley was an icon of modern broadcast journalism, a brilliant writer who could say in a few words what the country needed to hear during times of crisis, tragedy and triumph.
Tom Brokaw
#70. The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything - meals, jobs, clothing.
Tom Brokaw
#71. Our friend, Timothy J. Russert, was a man who awoke every morning as if he had just won the lottery the day before. He was determined to take full advantage of his good fortune that he couldn't quite believe and share it with everyone around him.
Tom Brokaw
#72. Sackcloth and kelp soup are not required, but the Buddhist reminder of the need to live lightly on the earth is a helpful guide to the daily habits and needs of us all.
Tom Brokaw
#73. Life is filled with seasons and this is a different season.
Tom Brokaw
#74. A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility
Tom Brokaw
#75. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president, died from multiple myeloma. Frank Reynolds, the ABC anchorman, who I had talked to toward the end of his life, not knowing what he had, died from it. Later I found out that Frank McGee, who was the Today Show host, died from it.
Tom Brokaw
#76. There's a lot of arrogance in the medical community. There are good, reliable websites you can go to for information - the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins.
Tom Brokaw
#77. You may be guided by the unending effort of poets and artists, biologists and psychiatrists to describe that irreplaceable and still mysterious emotion so essential to the human condition, but all the search engines in the universe cannot compete with the first kiss.
Tom Brokaw
#78. TV is a fickle business. I'm only good for the length of my contract.
Tom Brokaw
#79. Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.
Tom Brokaw
#80. Votes are something that you earn.
Tom Brokaw
#81. One of the things that we don't want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, because in a few days we're going to own that country.
Tom Brokaw
#82. Oklahoma residents are known for not backing down from a fight in the political arena, on the gridiron, NBA courts or rodeo arenas, but in their reaction to the bombing, they knew intuitively they would not find restoration in rage.
Tom Brokaw
#83. The greatest rewards of Jerry Ford's time were reserved for his fellow Americans and the nation he loved.
Tom Brokaw
#84. I have no problem whatsoever with a kind of political overview or an ideological overview for any of these outlets as long as it's transparent. We know where Breitbart stands, we know where Fox stands, where MSNBC stands. So, people go in with an understanding of that.
Tom Brokaw
#85. I like Washington a great deal. I enjoyed living there. But then I've enjoyed living almost everywhere I've ever been. I just find that it's a different menu wherever you go.
Tom Brokaw
#86. I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.
Tom Brokaw
#87. Came of age in the Great Depression, when economic despair hovered over
Tom Brokaw
#88. walked everywhere. He hated getting rides.
Tom Brokaw
#89. His life before the triumph that defined his legacy was a reminder of the importance of patience, courage, and the absence of self-pity.
Tom Brokaw
#90. After 50 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, my father died, too young, of a massive heart attack. He was 69. It's almost certain that all those years of nicotine inhalation were a major contributor to his clogged arteries.
Tom Brokaw
#91. What I quickly learned after my diagnosis is that the world of a cancer patient has many parts and a good deal of uncertainty.
Tom Brokaw
#92. There are more facts and more truths told in the first eight minutes of The Daily Show than most political news conferences in Washington.
Tom Brokaw
#93. Our obligation at the network is where do we fit into that and how can we best capitalize on that to make sure that our piece of that remains important to those young people.
Tom Brokaw
#94. I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?
Tom Brokaw
#95. We were not just competitors and colleagues, we were friends. We had a lot of opportunities to reflect on this in the last year. It was a competitive brotherhood.
Tom Brokaw
#96. When you walk into a doctor's office, you've got to have the same attitude you would about anything else. You've got to ask tough questions, and you've got to not be afraid to challenge their credentials.
Tom Brokaw
#97. The doctor didn't want me to play golf anymore and was worried about me fly-fishing. Golf is something I enjoy, but fly-fishing is a different thing: That's religion. Hunting is religion for me. I didn't want to give those up.
Tom Brokaw
#98. What I did was experiment with a little marijuana like a lot of other people and walked away ...
Tom Brokaw
#99. John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment.
Tom Brokaw
#100. There on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.
Tom Brokaw
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