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Quotes by Journalist
"Originality is the art of concealing your source."
251
"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said."
150
"We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics."
148
"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him."
119
"I think any journalist who spends time in a place realizes that there are lots of stories around beyond their primary story. You meet so many interesting people and have all kinds of experiences."
93
"All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
93
"There's probably one more story about Bosnia that I'd like to do, because I spent a fair amount of time on the Serb side of the lines, which isn't apparent in the other books."
87
"I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I've always had a very happy experience writing for them."
83
"Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened."
79
"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful."
74
"A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested."
73
"I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
72
"With comics you can put interesting and solid information in a format that's pretty palatable."
68
"And I think I find, I know a lot of people around, in different cities, and so it's not - it might sound strange - but it's not that hard to say good-bye, because I know there's other people where I'm going. I can sort of fit in in a lot of places."
66
"Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live."
66
"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence."
64
"We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine."
64
"When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it."
64
"Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation."
62
"What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next?"
61
"And, in some ways I like traveling, in other ways I'm sort of fed up by the whole notion."
61
"Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it."
61
"Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst."
60
"I may not have a practical mind, but it's very fixated on concrete things. I like detail."
59
"Our first object is... the obtaining of sovereignty, assured by international law, over a portion of the globe sufficiently large to satisfy our just requirements."
59
"You can say anything to David Icke and he will accept it and put it into his ideology."
59
"It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake."
57
"I'd rather go to a place and spend a couple of months, get to know it, get to know the people."
57
"Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure."
56
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
55
"My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection."
54
"The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege."
54
"I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing."
53
"And I'm in favor of that because I have a gay son, who's a very successful theater designer."
52
"It seems to me that the idea traditionally defended of endeavoring to maintain existing ethnic balances simply doesn't work any more."
51
"I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S."
50
"There are two sayings that are familiar in every news room across the country: 1) sex sells; 2) if it bleeds it leads."
50
"I am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire."
50
"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers."
49
"It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out."
49
"Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it."
48
"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
47
"I've learned it's always better to have a small percentage of a big success, than a hundred percent of nothing."
47
"Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve."
46
"An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory."
46
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