Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ... by Edward R. Murrow

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ...
by Edward R. Murrow

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ
in color for a full hour,
there would be a considerable number of stations
which would decline to carry it on the grounds
that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.
- Edward R. Murrow

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

Most truths are so naked
that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up,
at least a little bit.
- Edward R. Murrow

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason
if we dig deep in our history and remember
that we are not descended from fearful men,
not from men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate and to defend causes
which were for the moment unpopular.
- Edward R. Murrow

The obscure we see eventually.
The completely obvious,
it seems, takes longer.
- Edward R. Murrow

We will not walk in fear, one of another.
We are not descended from fearful men,
Not from men who feared to write, to speak,
To associate and to defend causes
which were for the moment unpopular.
This is no time... to keep silent.
- Edward R. Murrow

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
- Edward R. Murrow

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold.
It is also true that speed can multiply
the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
- Edward R. Murrow

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world
doesn't mean you are wiser
than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
- Edward R. Murrow

To be persuasive, we must be believable;
to be believable, we must be credible;
to be credible, we must be truthful.
- Edward R. Murrow

A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow.
There's nothing tangible of yesterday.
All I can say I've done is
agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes
and then boom - it's gone.
- Edward R. Murrow

No one can terrorize a whole nation,
unless we are all his accomplices.
- Edward R. Murrow

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
When the loyal opposition dies,
I think the soul of America dies with it.
- Edward R. Murrow

The politician in my country seeks votes,
affection and respect, in that order.
With few notable exceptions,
they are simply men who want to be loved.
- Edward R. Murrow

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed,
the oldest problem in the relations between human beings,
and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem,
of what to say and how to say it.
- Edward R. Murrow

One of the annoying things about believing in free will
and individual responsibility is the difficulty
of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable
how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.
- P. J. O'Rourke

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.
Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
- Epictetus

Three Rules of Work:
Out of clutter find simplicity;
From discord find harmony;
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
- Albert Einstein

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill

Difficulties show men what they are.
In case of any difficulty,
remember that God has pitted you
against a rough antagonist
that you may be a conqueror,
and this cannot be without toil.
- Epictetus

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty,
and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
- Abraham Lincoln

The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions,
the mobility and flow of risk capital...
the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital,
and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.
- John F. Kennedy

Well excuse me - we've got something
a little unusual going on here -
time travel, parallel universes,
or just a little common ordinary insanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If I seem to boast more than is becoming,
my excuse is that I brag
for humanity rather than for myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay...
does not represent the will of the American people.
I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong.
I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse
to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.
- Jimmy Carter

Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better
by all parties to leave the past to history,
especially as I propose to write that history myself.
- Winston Churchill

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The claim "I was only following orders" has been used
to justify too many tragedies in our history.
- Captain Picard of the television series
STAR TREK: The Next Generation

It is sad but unfortunately true that
man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung

History is the version of past events
that people have decided to agree upon.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
only after they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted
with the government of himself.
Can he, then be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
- Thomas Jefferson

Anyone who knows history, particularly
the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination
of education or of government
by any one particular religious faith
is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin

The very ink with which all history
is written is merely fluid prejudice.
- Mark Twain

The importance of history is in it's
educational value for our lives today,
not in regret, resentment, or revenge.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Everything we believe is a matter of evolution and history.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Everything we say, do, think, and feel
is a product of our personal history
and the collective history of humankind.
Our name for these histories is "prejudice."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few.
- Winston Churchill

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind
in the history of the world or to make it the last.
- John F. Kennedy

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
- Thomas Jefferson

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down
on the tracks of history
to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

For the very first time the young are
seeing history being made
before it is censored by their elders.
- Margaret Mead

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson

The history of free men is never really written by chance
but by choice; their choice!
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

A small body of determined spirits
fired by an unquenchable faith
in their mission
can alter the course of history.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

History does not long entrust the care of freedom
to the weak or the timid.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India,
history will look upon the act of
depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Thanks to television, for the first time
the young are seeing history made
before it is censored by their elders.
- Margaret Mead

Who has fully realized that history
is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood?
- Carl Jung

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ...by Edward R. Murrow

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Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ...
by Edward R. Murrow