Quote

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling civilized? And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

Walter Cronkite

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Cronkite
Age: 92 †
Born: 1916
Born: November 4
Died: 2009
Died: July 17
Journalist
News Presenter
Saint Joseph
Missouri
Walter Leland Cronkite
Jr.
Walter Leland Cronkite
Jr
Also
Thousands
Savages
Humans
Total
Arguments
Many
Killing
Persist
Must
Calling
Settle
Years
Argument
Occasionally
Least
Settling
Belief
Contradiction
Savage
Another
Civilized
Insist

More quotes by Walter Cronkite

Image
Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.
Walter Cronkite
Image
And that's the way it is.
Walter Cronkite
Image
It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.
Walter Cronkite
Image
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: And that's the way it is. To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
Walter Cronkite
Image
People who understand music hear sounds that no one else makes when Frank Sinatra sings.
Walter Cronkite
Image
Would it be better to have a president who cries easily? Well, that depends on what he cried about. I would not like the thought of a president who could not cry. That would be worse than one who cried over the right things. Which, in this case, would be the things I would cry over.
Walter Cronkite
Image
When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.
Walter Cronkite
Image
The 60s undoubtedly were the most turbulent years of the century.
Walter Cronkite
Image
A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control.
Walter Cronkite
Image
Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day-23 minutes-and that's supposed to be enough.
Walter Cronkite
Image
It seems to me that instead of cutting taxes, we ought to be increasing the taxes to pay off the deficit, rather than let that thing build up to the point where our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for our period of time and our years at the helm.
Walter Cronkite
Image
I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something.
Walter Cronkite
Image
So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.
Walter Cronkite
Image
To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
Walter Cronkite
Image
The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.
Walter Cronkite
Image
The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.
Walter Cronkite
Image
There is a compulsion that is perhaps the heart of life's meanings, this marvelous mystery of blood ties that brings joy whenever a new family member comes on the scene.
Walter Cronkite
Image
We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue.
Walter Cronkite
Image
The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.
Walter Cronkite
Image
Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.
Walter Cronkite