Top 35 Bob Schieffer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Go vote now it will make you feel big and strong.”

— Bob Schieffer

2. “I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.”

— Bob Schieffer

3. “I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.”

— Bob Schieffer

4. “My bladder cancer was related to smoking, and I think smoking kills people.”

— Bob Schieffer

5. “But if you don’t enjoy doing something, you’ll be miserable no matter how much money you make.”

— Bob Schieffer

6. “I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.”

— Bob Schieffer

7. “It’s no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.”

— Bob Schieffer

8. “A great deal of our ratings on the morning news are people who died during the night with their TV on.”

— Bob Schieffer

9. “Good policy always trumps bad public relations. And the best PR can’t trump bad policy.”

— Bob Schieffer

10. “It’s getting the right person that’s the challenge.”

— Bob Schieffer

11. “The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.”

— Bob Schieffer

12. “American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.”

— Bob Schieffer

13. “Nowadays I’m not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.”

— Bob Schieffer

14. “And as a result, I guess I’m just kind of a rubberneck. I’m kind of a – someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don’t think journalists are as important as the people they cover.”

— Bob Schieffer

15. “But here’s the deal: If I were smart, I could figure out curling. If I were even smarter, I could figure out why people would actually watch other people doing it. I have tried. I can’t. I can’t even figure out the object of the game. Is it like darts? I just don’t get it.”

— Bob Schieffer

16. “The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.”

— Bob Schieffer

17. “The government’s view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn’t want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.”

— Bob Schieffer

18. “At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They’re all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they’re all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That’s a formula for getting news.”

— Bob Schieffer

19. “And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn’t graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.”

— Bob Schieffer

20. “I used to be a print reporter.”

— Bob Schieffer

21. “Talk about threats to national security – how about government so big, so complicated and so unmanageable, it cant get out of its own way?”

— Bob Schieffer

22. “Once we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.”

— Bob Schieffer

23. “I had – all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a newspaper reporter because we didn’t have much television in those days.”

— Bob Schieffer

24. “Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn’t have happened.”

— Bob Schieffer

25. “The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game.”

— Bob Schieffer

26. “Well, you know, in any political campaign, you’re gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it’ll hurt the guy on the other side.”

— Bob Schieffer

27. “I can’t think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.”

— Bob Schieffer

28. “One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I’m interested in? Is it something I enjoy?”

— Bob Schieffer

29. “Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander’s boss to get that changed.”

— Bob Schieffer

30. “They’ve asked me to do this temporarily. I don’t know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.”

— Bob Schieffer

31. “And I came away from that experience, and it was a very difficult experience – I came to understand that you have to practice at being a good father and practice at being a good husband, just as you have to practice at being a good journalist.”

— Bob Schieffer

32. “As one former fake news writer told 60 Minutes, if it is in a news-ish format and agrees with preexisting biases, people will believe just about anything.12.”

— Bob Schieffer

33. “We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They’ve heard it on the radio. They’ve seen it on the Internet. They’ve seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.”

— Bob Schieffer

34. “I guess the worst snow was the Kennedy inauguration in 1960. Heavy snow.”

— Bob Schieffer

35. “But if you’re going to go out on a military unit, you’ve got to allow yourself to be under the control of the commander because you really could put the troops in danger.”

— Bob Schieffer

36. “Whether or not the President is sleeping well won’t be a factor in his re-election. That will depend on what he does while he is awake.”

— Bob Schieffer

37. “There’s fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.”

— Bob Schieffer

38. “In many parts of the country outside those metropolitan areas, it’s no longer a question of whether readers are getting biased news, it’s whether they are getting any news – or at least reliable news.”

— Bob Schieffer