Quotes from Ted Koppel

There is no more respected or influential forum in the field of journalism than the New York Times. I look forward, with great anticipation, to contributing to its op-ed page.

There's harmony and inner peace to be found in following a moral compass that points in the same direction regardless of fashion or trend.

Set your sights beyond what you can see. There is true majesty in the concept of an unseen power which can neither be measured nor weighed.

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: what is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time.

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

I have the necessary lack of tact.

In the days of Caesar, kings had fools and jesters. Now network presidents have anchormen.

You can almost measure where you are in life by the degree to which you have begun looking back rather than ahead.

My function is, as objectively and accurately as I can, to present reality to people out there, and doing that as quickly as we do is quite difficult enough, thank you.

More than four thousand programs produced and consumed. Some of them were pretty good, a great many of them were forgettable; but a handful may even be worth a book.

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.

Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach.

Emotions get in the way but they don't pay me to start crying at the loss of 269 lives. They pay me to put some perspective on the situation.

People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: What is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time.

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

There is something very very special, universal and easily identifiable among all Jews; it is beyond territory, it is something we all have in common.

Would anyone else like to say anything nice about women?

I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years, and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming.

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

To face despair and not give in to it, that's courage.