top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Editor
"Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism; the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young."
25
"Intellectuals are too sentimental for me."
25
"I've been campaigning for 17 of the last 24 months. I'm ready to legislate and not campaign."
25
"Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody."
24
"I think on civilian casualties they could do more. It's actually something I've discussed with the editors involved. They're aware of it, and I'm hopeful that there will be more reporting on that."
24
"Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people."
24
"Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness."
24
"If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be "gotcha" journalism, but it's also good journalism."
24
"The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages."
24
"But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper."
24
"We made only one real mistake. And even then we were right."
24
"I must be out of it, but I don't know any good journalists who have excused Clinton's problems."
23
"We were right about the slush fund. But Sloan did not testify about it to the Grand Jury."
23
"Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors."
23
"An organization's intelligence is distributed to the point of being ubiquitous."
22
"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine."
22
"Journalism constructs momentarily arrested equilibriums and gives disorder an implied order. That is already two steps from reality."
22
"More books, more racing and more foolishness with cars and motorcycles are in the works."
22
"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."
22
"I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism."
22
"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air."
22
"The Times' new credibility committee report that was issued on Monday very specifically said they will be putting in a policy that reporters must get permission from their department heads to appear on television, which I think is a really good thing."
22
"A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together."
22
"In the end, Dan Rather's legend skewered him, CBS and the craft of journalism."
21
"The system continually has to make this choice: it can either continue to exploit a known process and make it more productive, or it can explore a new process at the cost of being less efficient."
21
"I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting."
Love,
21
"Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few."
21
"Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other."
21
"Nothing is better for a young journalist than to go and write about something that other people don't know about. If you can afford to send yourself to some foreign part, I still think that's by far the best way to break in."
21
"The biggest difference between Kennedy and Nixon, as far as the press is concerned, is simply this: Jack Kennedy really liked newspaper people and he really enjoyed sparring with journalists."
21
"When a system is in turbulence, the turbulence is not just out there in the environment, but is a part of the organization or organism that you are looking at."
21
"Basins of attraction, of self organization, show up as well in our complex social environment, in human organizations. Here again, while we cannot predict the result of any given input, we can say that it will likely fall within one of several areas."
21
"Use missteps as stepping stones to deeper understanding and greater achievement."
20
"It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy."
20
"I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean."
20
"The number of great museums and nonprofits versus the number of corporate headquarters is incredibly out of whack."
20
bottom of page