James Reston Quotes

#1. James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes, great complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot.

Peter Morgan

#2. The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it.

James Barrett Reston

#3. As General Eisenhower discovered, it is easier to end the Cold War or stamp out poverty than to master this devilish pastime.

James Reston Jr.

#4. The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.

Alan Alda

#5. When I was writing songs, I always thought I'd make more of a career out of the drawings, the comics even more than the music.

Daniel Johnston

#6. Golf is the Lord's punishment for man's sins.

James Reston Jr.

#7. Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins.

James Barrett Reston

#8. If it's far away, it's news, but if it's close at home, it's sociology.

James Reston

#9. A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

James Reston

#10. Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.

James Reston

#11. Who says that actors are cattle? Show me a cow who can earn a million dollars a film.

Langdon Winner

#12. Writing is like masturbating when you have just masturbated. It's not fun. But it has to be done, or else people would not have anything to read while they sit on the toilet.

Ed Rosenthal

#13. In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.

James Reston

#14. I think we have got to get the Republicans and the Democrats to get back to what I call the fiscal conservative, the issues that drive the tea parties.

Michael Enzi

#15. This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

James Reston

#16. In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.

Philip Yancey

#17. these words of wisdom, so rarely understood: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.

Jules Verne

#18. There isn't a single professional sports season now that doesn't go on at least a month too long. Baseball starts in football weather, and football in baseball weather, and basketball overlaps them both.

James Reston Jr.

#19. In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.

James Reston

#20. In 1487 alone, two hundred heretics had-in one of the greatest euphemisms in the history of language-"relaxed," that is, burned at the stake.
Dogs of God, Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors

James Reston Jr.

#21. I made a promise to myself that if I came out of my situation alive, I had to make something of myself.

Dave Pelzer

#22. Changes in behavioral state are accompanied by internally coordinated changes in the information processing mode of local neuronal circuits.

Stephen Harrod Buhner

#23. He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebearers, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.

James Reston Jr.

#24. Stick with the optimists. It's going to be tough enough even if they're right.

James Reston

#25. The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

James Reston

#26. It was his own soul he was exploring, the one territory from which there was no escape, the one enemy which must always be faced, sooner or later, more certain than anything else in life or death.

Anne Perry

#27. Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

James Reston

#28. Wealth is conspicuous, but poverty hides.

James Reston

#29. All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.

James Reston