Quotes from Jim Lehrer

If you go to the ball game, you don't need to read the game story.

You want to see an angry person? Let me hear a cell phone go off.

Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist.

In my case, I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

One of the problems is that everybody is used to the old-fashioned debate system, which is very controlled, and where the moderator plays a more active role.

My conscience is clear.

The best moderators are the moderators who are essentially invisible. A moderator who is there to be seen and heard and to be talked about either, 'oh, God, what a great question,' or, 'oh, God, what a lousy question,' that to me is a failed moderator.

If we're going to have debates, let's have real debates.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

A debate has one purpose, one purpose only, and that is to facilitate the exchange of ideas directly between two candidates, and that's it.

There's only one interview technique that matters... Do your homework so you can listen to the answers and react to them and ask follow-ups. Do your homework, prepare.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.

Most of the gaffes I've made have not been funny - they've been stupid.

In my case, I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

My Marine experience helped shape who I am now personally and professionally, and I am grateful for that on an almost daily basis.

Not everyone can be relaxed or comfortable enough to seriously listen to the (debate or interview) answers.

I believe, as I am sure you believe, that eventually everything is known. Eventually it will become to somebody's interest to tell. Secrets are like meat; they can be frozen or eaten but not kept.

Mr. Halstead. I'm going to go spread the great news. Dr. Tonganoxie and Dr. Severy and everybody else will be so pleased.

We have increasingly fewer and fewer journalists who have any military experience and understand what life is like in the military and in combat.

I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid. I look at bus driving through the eyes of a little boy. I see it as glamorous.

Most of the stories I have covered in 45 years have been gray stories.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.