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Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

Bill Moyers

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Bill Moyers
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: June 5
Former White House Press Secretary
Journalist
Hugo
Oklahoma
Billy Don Moyers
Billy Moyers
Fact
Distemper
Universe
Pathological
Facts
Militant
Ideas
Static
Life
Conservatism
Closed
Anger
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A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times?
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Journalism's been a continuing course in adult education for me.
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The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone.
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I have seen hate born of fear, hate speaking in the name of God and truth, hate holding up a distorting mirror to fellow human beings.
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When I learn something new - and it happens every day - I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.
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The Supreme Court consistently favors organized money and the political privileges of the corporate class. We have a Senate that is more responsive to affluent constituents than to middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of income distribution have no apparent effect at all on the Senate's roll call votes.
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Presidents are afraid to lose wars. They're afraid to be outflanked on the right by the militarists. They don't want to be seen as soft on either communism or soft on terrorism or whatever. So presidents are constantly tugged away from their domestic commitments to foreign policy.
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On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths - half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.
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Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.
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