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Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means - what it bestows on us - the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.

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
People
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Policy
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More quotes by Bill Moyers

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Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
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Why is the country not having this conversation, the kind of conversation that requires the politicians who are responsible for the war to be specific to the concerns of the American people.
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I like what I do and keep thinking the best is yet to come.
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Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society.
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We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.
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I can't speak for a war that I believe is immoral.
Bill Moyers
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Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.
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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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How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
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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.
Bill Moyers
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Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization...Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.
Bill Moyers
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What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does.
Bill Moyers
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When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
Bill Moyers
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Barack Obama treated too lightly the people and forces determined to destroy him. They spat in his face and didn't even get ticketed for a misdemeanor.
Bill Moyers
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In America, one of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract, and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people.
Bill Moyers
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Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.
Bill Moyers
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Television can stir emotions, but it doesn't invite reflection as much as the printed page.
Bill Moyers
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If the watchdog doesn't bark, how do you know there's a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.
Bill Moyers
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Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House - as Brutus loved Caesar.
Bill Moyers
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In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys.
Bill Moyers