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I take We, the People seriously because I don't know how we build a civilization without reciprocity.

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
Civilization
Without
Take
People
Reciprocity
Seriously
Build

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In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That's why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.
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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.
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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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Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House - as Brutus loved Caesar.
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The things I really cared about - poverty, the Great Society, civil rights - were all being drained away by the Vietnam War. The line that keeps running through my mind is the line I never spoke: I can't speak for a war that I believe is immoral.
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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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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.
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Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.
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I can't speak for a war that I believe is immoral.
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I own and operate a ferocious ego.
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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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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.
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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.
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The massive upward distribution of wealth engineered by our political class over the last few decades has solidified the plutocratic control of the rule-making machinery in Washington and state capitals.
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When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
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Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.
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The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in the election and it's changing the conversation.
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Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
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Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions - the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who'd rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.
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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.
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