Quote

I was a typical farm boy. I liked the farm. I enjoyed the things that you do on a farm, go down to the drainage ditch and fish, and look at the crawfish and pick a little cotton.

Sam Donaldson

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Sam Donaldson
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: March 11
Journalist
El Paso
Texas
Look
Fish
Crawfish
Little
Fishes
Drainage
Looks
Enjoyed
Ditch
Things
Pick
Cotton
Liked
Farm
Picks
Agriculture
Boys
Farms
Littles
Typical

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I'd rather work with someone who's good at their job but doesn't like me, than someone who likes me but is a ninny.
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But in 1941, on December 8th, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother bought a radio and we listened to the war news. We'd not had a radio up to that time. I was born in 1934, so I was seven years of age.
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I saw a large, red dried swath that I immediately identified clearly as blood. I covered the war in Vietnam. I saw a lot of it [blood] there.
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And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.
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As I went to college, I went into radio and television. Now I suppose most people think that's one step ahead of basket weaving as a major in college, but it was part of the journalism department.
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If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.
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Well, I was born in El Paso, Texas, it was in the nearest hospital to the family farm.
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But as a young kid, I never did, really have an ambition to be a farmer. I never thought, gee, I would like to farm, and I want to raise these crops. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.
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Let's face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there - they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American!
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My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school.
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I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.
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I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.
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And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too.
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It wasn't until the late '70s that a lot of people knew me.
Sam Donaldson
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The questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.
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In 27 years of reporting from Washington, I've never heard a President admit he made a mistake.
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So when I cover the president, I try to remember two things: First, if you don't ask, you don't find out and second, the questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.
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The President's very shrewd
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News conferences are the only chance the American public has to see Ronald Reagan use his mind.
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If you sent me to cover a pie-baking contest on Mother's Day, I'm going to ask dear old Mom why she used artificial sweetener or stole the apples!
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