DAVID BRINKLEY

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

Washington, D.C. is a city filled with people who believe they are important.

I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system.

Being an anchor is not just a matter of sitting in front of a camera and looking pretty.

The only way to do news on television is not to be terrified of it.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

What exactly is the goal of the National Commission on Goals?

A bad tax is one that is wastefully and poorly spent.

Congress has been reformed so much that it can't get anything done.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

He managed to hit all the keys on the great American political piano.

Every politician higher up than assistant water commissioner knows how to avoid tough questions [from reporters]: Don't answer them.

If answers to our national problems were [readily] available we would not have to spend all our time talking about them.

In peace and war it's always money.

In Washington's political history a good many sow's ears have been turned into silk purses.

It is easy to be President if there are no problems and the money comes pouring in.

No political cliche can stand up to reality.

People who are starving can hardly become a peaceful people.

The President wants to go to the moon. We hardly have enough money left in the treasury to go to Baltimore.

In the American democracy the voter has a choice between a party that promises not to raise taxes and then raises them, and a party that makes no promises and raises them.

This is the first convention of the space age, where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.

Washington is a pool of money surrounded by people who want some.

In the forties [1940s] in Washington it was still unusual for a rich and socially well-connected married woman to work. If she did, her husband was assumed by his peers to be unable to support a household on his own and somehow to be inadequate.