Quotes from Walter Cronkite

The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck.

I'm still ready to go to the moon, if they'll take me.

Watergate just happened to come along at the same time as the demand for honesty in relations between the sexes, in advertising, in ecology, in almost everything. It just stumbled into that great big elephant trap that had already been built for it.

The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children.

It's always hard, after you've been in command, to take a lesser role.

I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. As a matter of fact, I really don't have that much to say about most things. Working with hard news satisfies me completely.

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family.

We have overcome some terrible blows to our democracy, to the future of our democracy, to the future of our nation. We survived the Civil War and the strife that tore this nation apart.

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

We need not only an executive to make international law, but we need the military forces to enforce that law and the judicial system to bring the criminals to justice before they have the opportunity to build military forces that use these horrid weapons that rogue nations and movements can get hold of - germs and atomic weapons.

I did not believe that the public was sophisticated enough to understand that a newsman could wear several hats and that we had the ability to turn off - nearly, you can't say perfectly, but nearly - all of our prejudices and biases.

There's no story that breaks, including a five-alarm fire in Brooklyn, that I don't wish I were covering.

Anchormen shouldn't cry.

I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.

We the people have the strength to bring our country from our weak-kneed stumbling gait in the last ranks of reason to the leadership of the great march to environmental victory.

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

I think the whole policy of pre-emptive war is a serious, serious mistake.

If every small nation with a border dispute believes they can go ahead and launch a pre-emptive war and that it will be approved by the greatest power, that is a very dangerous thing.

I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst.

In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain.

The very first time a politician puts you in his target is sometimes a disappointment, because perhaps you thought you were friends and getting along well... But it is not something that you dwelled on. At least, I did not.

I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.

A lot of the questions raised about television's power and influence on events have applied throughout history to every mass-communications medium - most particularly print, because that's the medium we've had the longest.

All through my life, I have never disguised my sentiments about politics in general.