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Quotes by Editor
"Home is one's birthplace, ratified by memory."
187
"You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction."
186
"Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation."
111
"His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings."
108
"The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness."
92
"Liberty is the only thing you can't have unless you give it to others."
88
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
85
"The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it."
79
"And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs."
78
"It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially."
78
"I wouldn't believe him if he said the sun came up in the east."
76
"Common sense is compelled to make its way without the enthusiasm of anyone."
76
"All of the troubles that some people have in life is that which they married into."
76
"I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions."
75
"Life is an adventure in forgiveness."
74
"Journalism constructs momentarily arrested equilibriums and gives disorder an implied order. That is already two steps from reality."
74
"I've been campaigning for 17 of the last 24 months. I'm ready to legislate and not campaign."
74
"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."
73
"Consistency is the paste jewel that only cheap men cherish."
72
"Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does."
72
"It's more along the lines of raising a child: we train the system to a certain range of behaviors that we find most useful. But then we let it go, because we don't want to have to be babysitting it the whole time."
72
"The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages."
72
"The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system."
71
"Aggression, the writer's main source of energy."
70
"Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors."
70
"Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off."
69
"I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits."
68
"What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen."
67
"Everyone suffers wrongs for which there is no remedy."
66
"If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be "gotcha" journalism, but it's also good journalism."
66
"I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism."
66
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