Quote

Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.

Bill Moyers

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bill Moyers
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: June 5
Former White House Press Secretary
Journalist
Hugo
Oklahoma
Billy Don Moyers
Billy Moyers
Claim
Claims
Works
Democracy

More quotes by Bill Moyers

Image
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.
Bill Moyers
Image
Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it's marinated in humor.
Bill Moyers
Image
In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.
Bill Moyers
Image
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.
Bill Moyers
Image
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
Image
When the public loses faith in democracy's ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game's almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.
Bill Moyers
Image
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.
Bill Moyers
Image
We don't care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.
Bill Moyers
Image
Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
Bill Moyers
Image
When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
Bill Moyers
Image
Empty your knapsack of all adjectives, adverbs and clauses that slo your stride and weaken your pace. Travel light. Remember the most memorable sentences in the English language are also the shortest: The King is dead and Jesus wept.
Bill Moyers
Image
I really believe that coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
Bill Moyers
Image
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
Image
These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.
Bill Moyers
Image
I'm angry at what's happening to America and angry with myself that I can't do more. I would be miserable if I couldn't bear witness.
Bill Moyers
Image
You only have to glance at the daily news to see how passions are stirred by claims of exclusive loyalty to one's own kin, one's own clan, one's own country, and one's own church. These ties that bind are vital to our communities and our lives, but they can also be twisted into a noose.
Bill Moyers
Image
I own and operate a ferocious ego.
Bill Moyers
Image
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
Image
[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.
Bill Moyers
Image
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.
Bill Moyers