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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

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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
Thinking
Public
Solve
Almost
Created
Class
Losing
Games
Close
Ability
Problems
Faith
Game
Problem
Loses
Think
Democracy
Mercenary

More quotes by Bill Moyers

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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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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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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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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.
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War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
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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.
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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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[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.
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I take We, the People seriously because I don't know how we build a civilization without reciprocity.
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There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle.
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Scientists investigate that which already is Engineers create that which has never been. Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
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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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I own and operate a ferocious ego.
Bill Moyers
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Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
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You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.
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Democracy doesn't begin at the top it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls 'The Patriot's Dream.
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Our children are being raised by appliances.
Bill Moyers
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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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We don't care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.
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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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