Bill Moyers > Quotes

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”
― Bill Moyers

“In marriage, everyday you love,and everyday you forgive.It is an ongoing sacrament, love and forgiveness”
― Bill Moyers

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
― Bill Moyers

“Civilization is but a thin veneer stretched across the passions of the human heart. And civilization doesn't just happen; we have to make it happen.”
― Bill Moyers

“When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.”
― Bill Moyers

“America's corporate and political elites
now form a regime of their own and
they're privatizing democracy. All the
benefits - the tax cuts, policies and
rewards flow in one direction: up.”
― Bill Moyers

“Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us.”
― Bill Moyers

“News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.”
― Bill Moyers

“Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.”
― Bill Moyers

“Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization . . . Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility”
― Bill Moyers

“The question, then, is not about changing people; it's about reaching people. I'm not speaking simply of better information, a sharper and clearer factual presentation to disperse the thick fogs generated by today's spin machines. Of course, we always need stronger empirical arguments to back up our case. It would certainly help if at least as many people who believe, say, in a "literal devil" or that God sent George W. Bush to the White House also knew that the top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Yes, people need more information than they get from the media conglomerates with their obsession for nonsense, violence and pap. And we need, as we keep hearing, "new ideas." But we are at an extraordinary moment. The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a "new direction" without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come.”
― Bill Moyers

“Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.”
― Bill Moyers

“secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of”
― bill moyers

“Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through.”
― Bill Moyers

“A free press is one where it’s ok to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.”
― Bill Moyers

“Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.”
― Bill Moyers

“When language fails, violence becomes a language.”
― Bill Moyers

“Corporations determine our political choices, Barber writes, citing studies that babies as young as six months can form mental images of corporate logos that are then established as brand loyalty by the age of two.”
― Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues

“Charity provides crumbs from the table; justice offers a place at the table”
― Bill Moyers

“patients benefit measurably when their medical treatment includes attention to their emotional needs.”
― Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind

“The whole point of a constitution is to say there are certain things that a majority cannot do, whether it’s 52 percent or 62 percent or 72 percent or 82 percent of the people.”
― Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues

“There’s a wonderful book, Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero, which cites a poll that half of Americans can’t name Genesis as the first book of the Bible. This is part of the dumbing down of our culture. One of those books that 50 percent of Americans apparently aren’t reading is the Bible, or they would know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It’s sort of like, “I don’t know what Genesis is, but I believe it.”
― Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues

“I worry that my own business... helps to make this an anxious age of agitated amnesiacs... We Americans seem to know everything about the last twenty-four hours but very little about the last sixty years.”
― Bill Moyers