Seymour Hersh Quotes

I think journalist is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting.Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.

Journalism is not just a cause, it's also a wacky profession.

I always wanted to be a serious journalist.

Journalism seems to have recovered its reason for being.

It's one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.

It won't make for a quiet life but it will make for an interesting paper vastly more significant because it is doing something only a daily paper can do.

Some people continue to pretend that anchor people are reporters.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.

For anyone in the news business, just the name 'Cronkite' conjures up images of a bygone era when journalists covered, and could at times impact, the most important stories of the day, rather than the most 'compelling' or salacious.

The modern economics of the newsroom don't support big investigative reporting staffs.

The amount of money that's being put into long-form investigative journalism has become less and less.

'Nothing But the Truth' is a journalistic thriller that is set during the end of days for print media.

I mean, I think everybody in the world, all the young people in the world, went to journalism school and wanted to investigate everything. And I think they overdid it. I think that you have to investigate things, you have to e skeptical, but you shouldn't be vengeful. You have to be fair and you have to be careful.

As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams.

I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like.

I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

The journalists in America are no longer covering critical stories. Investigative journalism is gone. Foreign-news coverage is gone. The press is owned by five giant corporations.

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

Hillary Clinton is pretty much what we would call a foreign-policy realist, someone who thinks the purpose of American foreign policy should be to adjust the foreign policies of other countries, work closely with traditional allies in Europe and Asia towards that end.

All of us in government service were elected to solve the problems that have plagued our nation. We are here to think big, to act boldly, and to rise above the petty, partisan squabbling of Washington, D.C. We are here to take action. It's time to start building our country with American workers and with American iron and aluminum and steel. It's time to put up soaring new infrastructure that inspires pride in our people and our towns. It is time at last to put America first.

I don't think there's a lot of dispute for this. You can argue that we didn't get everything done that we wanted to get done, but I can make a really strong argument, and I think prove, that by almost every measure the country's better off now than when I started.

I'm telling you, [ real people] are not mad at Al-Qaeda. They are not mad at ISIS. They are not mad at [Omar] Mateen. Mateen is a victim just like they are. They are a victim of this country. These angry, irrational Looney Tunes on social media - be it people who are commenting or originally posting - these people think they're victims of this country, too. They have been taught that!

There's a lot of disputes around the world, a lot of territorial conflicts around the world. But Israel is the only country in the world whose capital is not recognized. I don't think the United States recognizing Jerusalem as a capital will prevent any sort of peace agreement from happening in the future. It's not actually a sensible argument. What it will do is it will right a historic wrong. Something that should have happened 69 years ago will finally happen. And then we have to get about the process of trying to advance peace between the parties.

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: DId you think I meant country matters? Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia: What is, my lord? Hamlet: Nothing.