Top 40 Tom Brokaw Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.”

— Tom Brokaw

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Appreciation Quotes

2. “Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.”

— Tom Brokaw

3. “Bias, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Facts are your firewall against bias.”

— Tom Brokaw

4. “It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.”

— Tom Brokaw

5. “If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is the high church.”

— Tom Brokaw

6. “It is not enough to wire the world if you short-circuit the soul. Technology without heart is not enough.”

— Tom Brokaw

7. “In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up.”

— Tom Brokaw

8. “Life is filled with seasons and this is a different season.”

— Tom Brokaw

9. “The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America’s hidden 20th century history – the long and difficult trek of Southern blacks to the northern and western cities. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand the making of our modern nation.”

— Tom Brokaw

10. “We were not just competitors and colleagues, we were friends. We had a lot of opportunities to reflect on this in the last year. It was a competitive brotherhood.”

— Tom Brokaw

11. “Don’t be afraid to do something unconventional, to take a chance, to risk something.”

— Tom Brokaw

12. “Think of it as your ticket to change the world.”

— Tom Brokaw

13. “I wanted to see what was going on in the world. I sometimes think I overwished.”

— Tom Brokaw

14. “No text message will ever replace the first kiss.”

— Tom Brokaw

15. “A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility.”

— Tom Brokaw

16. “The meaningful role of the father of the bride was played out long before the church music began. It stretched across those years of infancy and puberty, adolescence and young adulthood. That’s when she needs you at her side.”

— Tom Brokaw

17. “There is no delete button for bigotry.”

— Tom Brokaw

18. “It’s not the questions that get us in trouble – it’s the answers...”

— Tom Brokaw

19. “A big part of making your own luck is just charging out of the gate every morning.”

— Tom Brokaw

20. “One of the things that we don’t want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, because in a few days we’re going to own that country.”

— Tom Brokaw

21. “It will do us little good to wire the world if we limit our vision. It will do us little good to wire the world if we short circuit our souls.”

— Tom Brokaw

22. “I think it’s very much a matter between Barbara Walters and ABC.”

— Tom Brokaw

23. “I hope the World War II generation doesn’t lose that quality that made them so appealing: their modesty, and the way they are always looking forward and seldom back.”

— Tom Brokaw

24. “What I think is highly inappropriate is what’s going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News that’s quite outrageous.”

— Tom Brokaw

25. “Ratings to me are a little like the Chinese Government. I don’t fully understand what makes a rating go. I don’t know what makes the American television audience respond to one person and not t another. There very seldom are great differences between many television personalities.”

— Tom Brokaw

26. “There are more facts and more truths told in the first eight minutes of The Daily Show than most political news conferences in Washington.”

— Tom Brokaw

27. “Sackcloth and kelp soup are not required, but the Buddhist reminder of the need to live lightly on the earth is a helpful guide to the daily habits and needs of us all.”

— Tom Brokaw

28. “It doesn’t do any good to wire the world if we short circuit the soul.”

— Tom Brokaw

29. “People do not like to have their favorite myths of idols challenged and as a rule I think that the public does not like bad news.”

— Tom Brokaw

30. “It’s so much easier to do it right than to do it wrong.”

— Tom Brokaw

31. “David Brinkley was an icon of modern broadcast journalism, a brilliant writer who could say in a few words what the country needed to hear during times of crisis, tragedy and triumph.”

— Tom Brokaw

32. “Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.”

— Tom Brokaw

33. “I think they are paying a lot more attention to news now, by the way, in part because of national-security issues. A lot of young people have friends or family in the military today.”

— Tom Brokaw

34. “Bob Hope was an entertainment colossus, shrewd and influential well beyond show business. Richard Zoglin’s biography captures it all – the public and private Hope.”

— Tom Brokaw

35. “Continuous coverage of the war in the Persian Gulf will resume in a moment.”

— Tom Brokaw

36. “Washington tends to be full of too many traps. I think reporters there do a lot of attending news briefings and news conferences expecting to get the real news out of those relatively sterile environments. But you’ve got to deal with the obscure people as well as the names.”

— Tom Brokaw

37. “When you run in places you visit, you encounter things you’d never see otherwise.”

— Tom Brokaw

38. “Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew’s account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon’s post-Watergate life is equally compelling.”

— Tom Brokaw

39. “Our obligation at the network is where do we fit into that and how can we best capitalize on that to make sure that our piece of that remains important to those young people.”

— Tom Brokaw

40. “Votes are something that you earn.”

— Tom Brokaw

41. “I like Washington a great deal. I enjoyed living there. But then I’ve enjoyed living almost everywhere I’ve ever been. I just find that it’s a different menu wherever you go.”

— Tom Brokaw

42. “Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case. I really thought that was outrageous that she was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a strong but thoughtful way.”

— Tom Brokaw

Featured in: Strong Quotes

43. “I always think there are people looking not so much for information as for reassurance and reaffirmation of their views.”

— Tom Brokaw

44. “I’m not going to sit on the porch of the old anchorman’s home with a drool cup.”

— Tom Brokaw

45. “I remain the luckiest guy I know.”

— Tom Brokaw

46. “TV is a fickle business. I’m only good for the length of my contract.”

— Tom Brokaw

47. “Healthcare workers are not being shot at, obviously, but they are exposed to dangerous diseases; they lead unconventional, all-hours lives; they are mission-oriented and they work in a hierarchical environment, with the physicians on top and orderlies doing the grunt work at the bottom.”

— Tom Brokaw

48. “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed, to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.” – From John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, January 1961 Given.”

— Tom Brokaw

49. “The WWII generation shares so many common values: duty, honor, country, personal responsibility and the marriage vow ” For better or for worse – it was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option.”

— Tom Brokaw