Top 35 Bill Keller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m a Capricorn, actually.”

— Bill Keller

2. “I make a joke that I’m the Internet curmudgeon, but ‘wary’ is a good way to put it.”

— Bill Keller

3. “The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.”

— Bill Keller

4. “Anyone with an Internet service provider can be a pundit or whatever they want.”

— Bill Keller

5. “Every technology, including the printing press, comes at some price.”

— Bill Keller

6. “My view of social media is that it is a set of tools, not a religion.”

— Bill Keller

7. “Being an editor has been a source of great satisfaction, but writing is the thing I truly love.”

— Bill Keller

8. “My feeling about the Internet or anything else is that the more it tends to become a cult, the more I want to call it into question.”

— Bill Keller

9. “One of the reasons that I’m a lurker on Twitter is that every time I tweet an idea, I feel like I’m delivering something to the competition that I ought to be giving to a reporter here.”

— Bill Keller

10. “I don’t think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.”

— Bill Keller

11. “Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.”

— Bill Keller

12. “Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it’s also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.”

— Bill Keller

13. “Liberation movements – operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially – thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.”

— Bill Keller

14. “A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Satan.”

— Bill Keller

15. “I think Twitter is a fabulous tool. Crowd-sourcing by Twitter is useful in getting early warnings.”

— Bill Keller

16. “I think there’s a misconception that I’m opposed to social media.”

— Bill Keller

17. “It’s a considerable source of tragedy in the world that people stay in powerful jobs long past the point where they’re a spent force.”

— Bill Keller

18. “You don’t want to go around willy-nilly suing news organizations. That’s probably self-defeating.”

— Bill Keller

19. “The curse of a journalist is that he always has more questions than answers.”

— Bill Keller

20. “The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.”

— Bill Keller

21. “Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can’t pick one favorite.”

— Bill Keller

22. “There is something decidedly faux about the camaraderie of Facebook, something illusory about the connectedness of Twitter.”

— Bill Keller

23. “I’m convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians.”

— Bill Keller

24. “Liberation movements – prizing ends over means – are not always particular about their friends or scrupulous about their transactions.”

— Bill Keller

25. “My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer’s mind-set: Everything’s kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?”

— Bill Keller

26. “Twitter and Facebook are brilliant- tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible.”

— Bill Keller

27. “Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don’t personally believe that.”

— Bill Keller

28. “I don’t think anyone at Fox believes they are producing even-handed, impartial coverage.”

— Bill Keller

29. “I think there’s been a decline in the public’s access to what’s being done with their tax dollars, what’s being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.”

— Bill Keller

30. “I may be the old-media id, but I think I may be entitled to some credit for being a new-media pioneer.”

— Bill Keller

31. “Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it.”

— Bill Keller

32. “I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.”

— Bill Keller

33. “Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company’s announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.”

— Bill Keller

34. “I don’t have dating tips.”

— Bill Keller

35. “One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.”

— Bill Keller

36. “The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements.”

— Bill Keller