Top 100 Dan Rather Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Never eat spinach just before going on the air.”

— Dan Rather

52. “But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won’t. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.”

— Dan Rather

53. “Dissent is most controversial during wartime because it is cast as unpatriotic and dangerous to the national cause. But that is precisely the time when a democracy should be asking itself difficult and uncomfortable questions.”

— Dan Rather

54. “I respect and empathize with reporters and editors who must compete in today’s environment. And I know full well that when I’ve been covering campaigns, which I still do, I’ve made my mistakes and have been far from perfect.”

— Dan Rather

55. “God forbid, but if this nation ultimately fails, I believe it will be because opinions, propaganda, and superstitions replaced facts as the basis for our governance. By doing so, we will have undercut a key strength of the United States over the course of its history, one that receives too little attention: science.”

— Dan Rather

56. “One of the most important roles of our journalists is to be watchdogs.”

— Dan Rather

57. “Anyone who says network news cannot be profitable doesn’t know what he is talking about. But anyone who says it must “always,” make money is misguided and irresponsible.”

— Dan Rather

58. “I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to ‘smack,’ and quickly.”

— Dan Rather

59. “We are a nation not only of dreamers, but also of fixers. We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and time again, “This is not good enough; we can be better.”

— Dan Rather

60. “Orwell understood that a government that is beyond the reach of accountability has little incentive to tell the truth. Indeed, its power may arise from the obliteration of objective facts. In the world of 1984, contradictory statements lose all sense of context and we are left with preposterous slogans: “War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.” And yet Orwell asks us, if there is no one with the power to call out a lie as a lie, does it end up ceasing to be a lie?”

— Dan Rather

61. “If I didn’t have a front-row seat on history, it was at least a seat on the aisle.”

— Dan Rather

62. “Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.”

— Dan Rather

63. “Recently we have seen a level of public protest unlike anything we have witnessed in decades. Dissent is about marching, and making one’s voice heard in the streets and at the ballot box. But at the same time, there are strong voices calling this dissent unpatriotic and dangerous. We cannot let the forces of suppression win. America works best when new thoughts can emerge to compete, and thrive, in a marketplace of ideas.”

— Dan Rather

64. “Journalism is less addictive than communism.”

— Dan Rather

65. “Are the Democrats going to dance the mandate Macarena?”

— Dan Rather

66. “Going into the forest with my dad was a backdrop to my young life. It was just what people did. I was expected to be able to identify the species of trees and to know how to avoid getting lost. Nature wasn’t something that you drove to, or planned on seeing, or for which you bought a fancy outdoor wardrobe. I worry that now it is an activity that must compete with soccer practices, homework, piano lessons, and all the other responsibilities that fill up the calendar of a family with children.”

— Dan Rather

67. “I’m part of nobody’s world except Brezhnev’s.”

— Dan Rather

68. “The reelection of Bill Clinton is as secure as a double-knot tied in wet rawhide.”

— Dan Rather

69. “There is no doubt that the way journalism worked when I was growing up and getting started has changed forever.”

— Dan Rather

70. “As long as I have my health, I want to be reporting somewhere.”

— Dan Rather

71. “When the going gets weird, anchormen punt.”

— Dan Rather

72. “Those of you watching and listening, get a cup of coffee or a spot of tea and join us back here in just a few moments.”

— Dan Rather

73. “They may have turned this up, whether you had the Paula Jones case or not. But again maybe not, but again that’s like if a frog had side pockets he’d probably wear a handgun.”

— Dan Rather

74. “There are more Muslims in North America then Jews Now.”

— Dan Rather

75. “I can say with confidence I know a fair bit about LSD.”

— Dan Rather

76. “For years Don Imus was just – boy, he was merciless in his criticism of me. Maybe it was justified, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

— Dan Rather

77. “Now, I know you expected me to say that, well, I just kick back in the rocking chair, fished a little bit, listened to Willie Nelson tapes and watched old baseball games on the Classic Sports network. And, tell you the truth, I have done that for maybe about five total minutes.”

— Dan Rather

78. “Start-ups like UniversityNow, a network of low-cost, online colleges, allows students to work at their own pace and pay a few hundred dollars a month for a degree.”

— Dan Rather

79. “Writing is the rock on which everything is built.”

— Dan Rather

80. “As someone who’s been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.”

— Dan Rather

81. “Have you ever had any anger about President Bush – who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard – running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam? You have to be at least irritated by that, or have you been?”

— Dan Rather

82. “What separated Ed Murrow from the rest of the pack was courage.”

— Dan Rather

83. “We all have come here from somewhere else, and the vast majority of us are only a few generations removed from another land. Whether that is one generation or ten, it seems rather sanctimonious to claim that there is much of a difference. Not many of us can trace our arrival back a few hundred years, let alone millennia. But even the ancestors of the Native Americans are believed to have come across a land bridge from Asia – a reminder that we are a species of migrations, and always have been.”

— Dan Rather

84. “Gerrymandering isn’t just a recent phenomenon, though; the word was coined in 1812 when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry went to such egregious lengths to redraw the state senate districts in his party’s favor that one district took on the shape of a salamander.”

— Dan Rather

85. “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.”

— Dan Rather

86. “The role of dissent is to force all of us to question our dogmas and biases. It is to stretch the spectrum of discourse.”

— Dan Rather

87. “I have tried to remain a working, cutting-edge journalist and I don’t do it the way everybody else does it. And I think that’s the difference.”

— Dan Rather

88. “President Reagan had said, in a presidential debate against Walter Mondale, “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.” Imagine: The patron saint of the modern conservative movement made the case for a concept that today would have him pilloried by the right-wing press and those cynical politicians who have learned to exploit division for their own electoral success.”

— Dan Rather

89. “We see elected officials pounding their chests, saying their vision of America represents the only real patriotism. To them I say that patriotism is not a cudgel. It is not an arms race.”

— Dan Rather

90. “We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas, and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live.”

— Dan Rather

91. “I’ve always tried to be fair, even-handed, not an advocate for any group.”

— Dan Rather

92. “Catholic dioceses typically spent hundreds of thousands of dollars recklessly, then filed for bankruptcy. The goal was to avoid the money going to the hands of victims of predator priests.”

— Dan Rather

93. “Americans are once again looking outward.”

— Dan Rather

94. “Simply put, we have more people talking about news and less original reporting. Whether on television or online, there is no shortage of analysis. But analysis is only as good as the information that supports it. The deep cuts to newsrooms in print and electronic media have resulted in far fewer reporters waking up each morning deciding what story they will chase. There is less investigative reporting...”

— Dan Rather

95. “The Republican convention opens in New York to re-nominate George W. Bush and showcase the party’s, quote, ‘moderate side.’ Will voters buy it?”

— Dan Rather

96. “By more than two to one Americans do not consider what Kevorkian did, injecting a terminally ill patient with legal drugs at the patient’s request, to be the same as murder. You may want to note that laws are not supposed to be enforced on the basis of public opinion polls.”

— Dan Rather

97. “Patriotism would require standing up to what I had seen, not standing alongside it in silence.”

— Dan Rather

98. “I know that this story is true.”

— Dan Rather

99. “I think it’s important for the public to know, great reporting starts with a publisher who has guts and an editor who has guts.”

— Dan Rather

100. “On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush’s federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education.”

— Dan Rather