Jim Lehrer Quotes

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.

When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

The public interest is not defined as what is interesting to the public.

The Social Security System is the one great social policy achievement of the twentieth century.

if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic ...

We will battle day and night to pass social security reform.

Americans never would alter the way entitlement programs are funded or education administered without serious study and widespread debate.

Let me tell you exactly what we would do on Social Security. Yes, we'd raise the retirement age two years and phase it in over 25 years; that means we'd raise it one month a year for 25 years when we're all living longer, and living better lives.

Governments must now take a leading role in moving their nations in the right direction.

There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.'

I urge the Bush Administration to rethink its priorities. We can't talk about community values without being prepared to invest in those very same communities.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

Businesses should be focused on business, and social responsibility should be government responsibility.

I don't enjoy doing the daily stuff... but I would love to do something like the series that I did on 'Change India.' That was not just news. The programme was based in public policy, so that kind of influences change.

I would love to see a march on Washington that says 'Save our Social Security'.

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

Devolutionary reform will not provide a factory, a machine or jobs, build a school, train a doctor or put a pound on pensions.

Every newspaper lives by appealing to a particular public. It can only go ahead of its times if it carries its public with it. Success in journalism depends on understanding the public.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

“Privatization” is a buzzword for destroying Social Security.

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, conthrols th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.