Cronkite Quotes

#1. While the Constitution is what the judges say it is, a public issue is something that Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor recognizes as such. The media by themselves do not make the decisions, but on behalf of themselves and larger interests they certify what is or is not on the nation's agenda.

Fred W. Friendly

#2. I don't read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite's rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart. Never pass up a drink. Never ignore an erection.

Roger Angell

#3. Caltech honored me
they named an asteroid after me. There's only two of them up there with names. One of them is Walter Cronkite. The other is Tommy Lasorda.

Tommy Lasorda

#4. Although Cronkite had once crash landed in a Dutch potato field under enemy fire, he chose instead to focus on celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands at the hands of the Free Dutch.

Douglas Brinkley

#5. Everyone else was trying to make things more complicated and Cronkite, typically, was trying to make them more simple.

David Halberstam

#6. Cronkite is not a genius at anything except being straight, honest, and normal.

Douglas Brinkley

#7. Walter [Cronkite] sang me a little sea chantey. The verse ended, 'Just watch your back with Dan [Rather], dear, just watch your back with Dan.'.

Connie Chung

#8. Walter Cronkite had a golden rule for all wartime reporters: never self-aggrandize.

Douglas Brinkley

#9. It is time we accept there's no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes.

Tiffany Madison

#10. Can you imagine the most trusted man in America? Cronkite deserved it too.

Mike Wallace

#11. If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh 500 pounds.

Douglas Brinkley

#12. The death of a famous person is different from the death of a loved one, whether it is Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt, or Walter Cronkite. We didn't know any of them personally, and yet, we experience a sense of loss.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#13. I liked the way Walter Cronkite looked, with his black glasses and his voice that knew everything worth knowing. Here was a man who was not against books, that was plain. Take everything T. Ray was not, shape it into a person, and you would get Walter Cronkite.

Sue Monk Kidd

#14. As Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is.

Howard Fineman

#15. Cronkite had mastered the intentional pause, the need for frozen seconds of long silence at certain historic moments. Nobody before or after Cronkite had mastered the art of communicating news on television nightly without ever becoming an irritant.

Douglas Brinkley

#16. Everybody trusted Cronkite because he reminded them of their favorite uncle or trusted family physician. Being square in the age of the Beatles made Cronkite retro cool.

Douglas Brinkley

#17. I give Cronkite a whole lot of credit.

Ben Bradlee

#18. It was true. Heard it on Cronkite.

Nathan Hill

#19. We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation.

Barack Obama

#20. Walter Cronkite was the last newsman everyone trusted in the same way that the Beatles were the last music everyone loved and Marilyn was the last star everyone concurred was worthy of the word.

Steve Erickson

#21. Walter Cronkite was a personally decent and convivial man, who literally couldn't kill a fly, was kind to his children, generally helpful to juniors, authentically curious about the news, and, in his time, an energetic reporter.

Conrad Black

#22. He [Walter Cronkite] was also a profoundly good man. I don't think we should lose sight of that. All those professional gifts emanated from a very good core and that's something that's beyond training. It's who he was.

Bill Clinton

#23. Everybody who's in the news business today was influenced in a positive way by Walter Cronkite. He had ability, humility and integrity, a rare combination.

Roger Ailes

#24. Professionally, I remember Cronkite as a kid growing up, and more so for me, the importance of Cronkite was not him sitting there at the anchor desk, but him out there doing things.

Ed Bradley

#25. Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, Cronkite is a classic. Douglas Brinkley has written his best book yet. This is a fascinating story that will be read for years to come.

Debby Applegate

#26. With the fragmentation of television audiences and the advent of cable and on-demand services, the prestige of being an anchor is not what it was in the days of Walter Cronkite.

Jill Abramson

#27. When he (Walter Cronkite) drank, he had an appetite for both history and political bullshit.

Douglas Brinkley

#28. A newspaper may somewhat arrogantly assert that it prints "all the news that's fit to print." But no newspaper yet has been moved to declare at the end of each edition, "That's the way it is," as Walter Cronkite does.

Eugene McCarthy

#29. I've always loved watching the news on TV. As a kid, I loved watching Walter Cronkite, for some reason.

Will Ferrell

#30. Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

Dick Van Dyke

#31. Cronkite was always one step short of disillusionment.

Douglas Brinkley

#32. watched in horror until Walter Cronkite finally announced the news that Kennedy was dead. The boys didn't try to argue about the stupidity of the ancient Hebrews again.

Katherine Paterson

#33. It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.

Walter Cronkite

#34. If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism
that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.

Walter Cronkite

#35. The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.

Walter Cronkite

#36. Reagan was an exceedingly likeable guy, just a heck of a nice fellow, despite his politics. He was funny and loved a good joke, the dirtier, I'm afraid the more ethnic, the better. I don't think he brought very much to the presidency, except charisma and success.

Walter Cronkite

#37. The sweet smell of the South, of Camellias and Azaleas, clings to Beaufort's ancient and historic buildings.

Walter Cronkite

#38. When the Eagle landed on the moon, I was speechless - overwhelmed, like most of the world. Couldn't say a word. I think all I said was, 'Wow! Jeez!' Not exactly immortal. Well, I was nothing if not human.

Walter Cronkite

#39. In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.

Walter Cronkite

#40. We've always known you can gain circulation or viewers by cheapening the product, and now you're finding the bad driving out the good.

Walter Cronkite

#41. Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.

Walter Cronkite

#42. Those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.

Walter Cronkite

#43. I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.

Walter Cronkite

#44. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do.

Walter Cronkite

#45. Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away. They just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is, Friday, March 6, 1981.

Walter Cronkite

#46. We're living in a state where no one can trust his telephone conversations, nor even his personal conversations in a room, in a bar or anywhere else.

Walter Cronkite

#47. I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.

Walter Cronkite

#48. Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.

Walter Cronkite

#49. Interviewing friends is a tough one. Your duty to the interview must transcend your friendship. Occasionally you'll lose a friend.

Walter Cronkite

#50. We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.

Walter Cronkite

#51. America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

Walter Cronkite

#52. I guess I showed certain signs of being a workaholic in early years; I had a magazine route very early on - I must have been about seven or eight years old or something like that - when I was carrying Liberty magazine, trying to win green and brown coupons; I eventually [won] a pony.

Walter Cronkite

#53. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a registered independent because I find that I cast my votes not on the basis of party loyalty but on the issues of the moment and my assessment of the candidates.

Walter Cronkite

#54. We must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a World Government, patterned after our Own Government with a legislature, executive and judiciary and police.

Walter Cronkite

#55. Would it be better to have a president who cries easily? Well, that depends on what he cried about. I would not like the thought of a president who could not cry. That would be worse than one who cried over the right things. Which, in this case, would be the things I would cry over.

Walter Cronkite

#56. News reporters are certainly liberal and left of center.

Walter Cronkite

#57. Television [is] a high-impact medium. It does some things no other force can do-transmitting electronic pictures through the air. Still, as an explored, comprehensive medium, it is not a substitute for print.

Walter Cronkite

#58. We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

Walter Cronkite

#59. For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders.

Walter Cronkite

#60. Probably the most important single element that I found in my own marriage was a sense of humor. My wife had a delicious sense of humor, and I think I have an adequate one.

Walter Cronkite

#61. I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family.

Walter Cronkite

#62. The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.

Walter Cronkite

#63. I've gone from the most trusted man in America to one of the most debated.

Walter Cronkite

#64. We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.

Walter Cronkite

#65. Justice was born outside the home and a long way from it; and it has never been adopted there

Walter Cronkite

#66. When you're bringing in a fairly unknown candidate challenging a sitting president, the population needs a lot more information than reduced coverage provides.

Walter Cronkite

#67. Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil. Well join me - I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.

Walter Cronkite

#68. In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.

Walter Cronkite

#69. Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened.

Walter Cronkite

#70. We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue.

Walter Cronkite

#71. Our task is not to tell the truth; we are opinion molders.

Walter Cronkite

#72. The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

Walter Cronkite

#73. Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.

Walter Cronkite

#74. I'd like to be a song and dance man.

Walter Cronkite

#75. I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.

Walter Cronkite

#76. I think he [composer Joe Raposo] was the first man who kissed me on the cheek.

Walter Cronkite

#77. Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

Walter Cronkite

#78. I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.

Walter Cronkite

#79. This opens the door on another chapter of history.

Walter Cronkite

#80. We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

Walter Cronkite

#81. A system of world order-preferably a system of world government -is mandatory ... The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty ...

Walter Cronkite

#82. There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.

Walter Cronkite

#83. I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.

Walter Cronkite

#84. When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.

Walter Cronkite

#85. The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know - not what they want to know.

Walter Cronkite

#86. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists.

Walter Cronkite

#87. People who understand music hear sounds that no one else makes when Frank Sinatra sings.

Walter Cronkite

#88. The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.

Walter Cronkite

#89. The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it.

Walter Cronkite

#90. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past,

Walter Cronkite

#91. I'm a romanticist in many ways. I never get behind the wheel of my boat and dropping the anchor without saying to myself, secretly giving my orders to the crew "All right, lift the anchor, we're on our way to South Hampton. We're gonna beat them there with this load of tea!"

Walter Cronkite

#92. It seems to me that instead of cutting taxes, we ought to be increasing the taxes to pay off the deficit, rather than let that thing build up to the point where our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for our period of time and our years at the helm.

Walter Cronkite

#93. And that's the way it is.

Walter Cronkite

#94. Television ... is not a substitute for print.

Walter Cronkite

#95. The perils of duck hunting are great - especially for the duck.

Walter Cronkite

#96. Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.

Walter Cronkite

#97. Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough.

Walter Cronkite

#98. I'm very proud of what Harry Truman turned out to be in office and the record he made. Certainly I think he'll go down in history as one of the greats, because of his conscience, his determination to stick with what he knew was right.

Walter Cronkite

#99. The 60s undoubtedly were the most turbulent years of the century.

Walter Cronkite

#100. Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

Walter Cronkite