Top 35 Roger Ailes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I think the worst decision is usually no decision. If you make the wrong decision you can usually course-correct, but if you don’t make it, you’ve already made it, and it’s usually the bad one.”

— Roger Ailes

2. “I only understand friendship or scorched earth.”

— Roger Ailes

3. “I quit politics because I hated it.”

— Roger Ailes

4. “If you have a choice between qualifications and personal qualities when it comes to hiring people, go with personal qualities. You can teach them the job.”

— Roger Ailes

5. “I can’t stand cruel people. And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else just to make themselves feel important, it really gets me mad.”

— Roger Ailes

6. “I think I have a good eye for talent. I think I’m smart enough to figure out what the mission is and achieve it. I achieve it by hiring good people.”

— Roger Ailes

7. “My doctor told me that I’m old, fat, and ugly, but none of those things is going to kill me immediately.”

— Roger Ailes

8. “It’s better to be in charge of change than to have to react to change.”

— Roger Ailes

9. “Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country – my dad was a factory guy – I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don’t mind if people want to argue with that, or think that’s crazy.”

— Roger Ailes

10. “Capitalism works. In the end, socialism imploded on itself. Communism imploded on itself. Ultimately jihadism will implode on itself, if we stay in the fight and stay on offense because failed philosophies don’t work, there’s no future.”

— Roger Ailes

11. “I want to elect the next president.”

— Roger Ailes

12. “You cover the bad news about America. You do. But you don’t get up in the morning hating your country. And so, until somebody shows me lines at the border trying to get out, I think there’s some good news.”

— Roger Ailes

13. “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face al Qaeda.”

— Roger Ailes

14. “Truth is whatever people will believe.”

— Roger Ailes

15. “I love rich people. Any time I needed a job, I went to a rich person. I like poor people, but they never had a job for me.”

— Roger Ailes

16. “I have a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.”

— Roger Ailes

17. “You can get people the qualifications; But you can’t teach them the qualities they’re going to need. You can’t teach integrity, a drive for excellence, refusal to quit under pressure. It’s too late to build that into people you’re going to hire.”

— Roger Ailes

18. “You never pull the trigger until you know you can win.”

— Roger Ailes

19. “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”

— Roger Ailes

20. “I’ve been in entertainment, politics, business, business coaching, public affairs, documentaries, programming, news, theater. So, there aren’t many things I see that I haven’t seen something like that before.”

— Roger Ailes

21. “I don’t have any focus groups on talent and programming. If I need five people in a mall to be paid $40 to tell me how to do my job, I shouldn’t do my job.”

— Roger Ailes

22. “Everybody fears the unknown. But I have a strong feeling there’s something bigger than us. I don’t think all this exists because some rocks happened to collide. I’m at peace. When it comes, I’ll be fine, calm. I’ll miss life, though. Especially my family.”

— Roger Ailes

23. “Let’s face it, a lot of people think Nixon is dull. Think he’s a bore, a pain in the ass. They look at him as the kind of kid who always carried a bookbag. Who was forty-two years old the day he was born. They figure other kids got footballs for Christmas, Nixon got a briefcase and he loved it. He’d always have his homework done and he’d never let you copy.”

— Roger Ailes

24. “CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad.”

— Roger Ailes

25. “I hire people who can do their jobs and who will advise me of things they don’t agree with. The worst thing you can do is get in a room with 14 people who say, “OK!” Then you really are making decisions about engineering and finance and other areas.”

— Roger Ailes

26. “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time.”

— Roger Ailes

27. “You can’t sell a book in America if you don’t dump on Bush. That’s the cheapest shot in the world. You cannot get an advance, and you can’t sell a book because the publishers are all people who hate Bush and hate Republicans.”

— Roger Ailes

28. “The thing you always have to remember is, you look at people and they might look like a failure but there’s often a narrow thing they do very well.”

— Roger Ailes

29. “I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was.”

— Roger Ailes

30. “I often tell my clients they should do at least 30 percent of all their reading outside their own field. This will give them perspective and knowledge that will make them more interesting.”

— Roger Ailes

31. “Television and I grew up together.”

— Roger Ailes

32. “People always describe my successes in life. My successes in life tend to be personal, not career.”

— Roger Ailes

33. “Every other network has given all their shows to liberals. We are the balance.”

— Roger Ailes

34. “Almost everything I do is related to my ability to hire good people. I don’t take much of the credit myself. I think I have a good eye.”

— Roger Ailes

35. “I look for something unique, and I look for people who haven’t reached their potential. I think I’m pretty good at developing talent.”

— Roger Ailes

36. “There is a – deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me.”

— Roger Ailes

37. “I’m very confident in the management team, very confident in the on-air people. That’s the whole secret to everything. It’s having people who love to work where they’re working and want to win.”

— Roger Ailes

38. “Everybody who’s in the news business today was influenced in a positive way by Walter Cronkite. He had ability, humility and integrity, a rare combination.”

— Roger Ailes