Dan Rather Quotes

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you're essentially running to things that other people are running away from.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw in character.

There are a lot of reporters who I feel are a lot more courageous and fool-hardy than I am. Maybe at the top I'd put Dexter Filkins. He's an extraordinary man in terms of his nerve and ability to get into dangerous situations and tell the story cogently. He's bringing back real human stories. I admire that.

Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.

Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.

There's nothing harder than going on TV and saying something that you don't believe. I don't do that anymore.

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please.

In all the writers I admire, the common detonator is their courage to walk naked.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

War reporters are often seen as a wild bunch of thrill-seekers who wade into danger zones simply for the sake of the adrenalin high the settings inevitably provide. But this one-dimensional explanation leaves out the core of the story, which is that reporters go to these places because they feel the tug of responsibility.

I know what real courage is, and I understand true compassion.

But on the other hand, in the midst of the chaos, you find normal people. You find people who are willing to risk their lives to tell you what they saw, even though they have no dog in the fight.

Say not that honor is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action that it is due, but to the manner of performing it.

Most of us entered journalism and joined 'news organizations' because we care about the greater good. We strive to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

I've never worried about payback. People are hungry for leadership that's not afraid of political consequence.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

My biggest strength is I'm courageous, or if I am afraid of something, I do it anyway. I do what I feel. It's nothing personal against anyone, so that courageousness has been very good to me.

Even if a minefield or the abyss should lie before me, I will march straight ahead without looking back.

The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute.