Halberstam Quotes

Peterson thought it an unusual friendship, one only the Army could forge. — David Halberstam

Being well known for being well-known did not necessarily imply intelligence. — David Halberstam

There was, I found, always more to learn. — David Halberstam

She had no fear of the spotlight, only of the places it did not reach. — David Halberstam

Most commanders wanted as many good sources of information as possible. MacArthur was focused on limiting and controlling his sources of intelligence. — David Halberstam

Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't want to do it — David Halberstam

Most journalists are impatient to get their legwork done and to start the actual writing — David Halberstam

Mohr was one of the most talented people on the staff of Time, in print as well as in person - the two are often different. — David Halberstam

Until he (Time's founder Henry Luce) arrived, news was crime and politics. — David Halberstam

As he found beauty in the hamburger, he thought hot dogs unattractive - both aesthetically and commercially. — David Halberstam

He saw the pleasure you took from your job every day of his life, and THAT was what he wanted. — David Halberstam

One successful writer said he would never be a millionaire because he liked living like one too much. — David Halberstam

Elliston thought consistency less important than vitality and intelligence and passion. — David Halberstam

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function. — David Halberstam

When he studied, it was not so much for a promotion as to EXCEL at his job. — David Halberstam

He was the rarest of things, a Republican with sex appeal. — David Halberstam

But why should women and queer people learn to forget? Generational logic underpins our investments in the dialectic of memory and forgetting; — J. Jack Halberstam

He was not what gentlemen usually thought a gentleman was. — David Halberstam

It was the responsibility of a senior fireman to teach as well as to do. — David Halberstam

The ability to get on the air, which was crucial to any reporter's career, grew precisely as the ability to analyze diminished. — David Halberstam

To tell a ghost story means being willing to be haunted. — Judith "Jack" Halberstam

True wisdom ... is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. — David Halberstam

His body language was that of someone frozen and not yet thawed out. — David Halberstam

The faster the motion, the less time to think. Fuselage journalism, Hugh Sidey of Time later called it. — David Halberstam

If she was making the right and courageous decisions, he thought, she was nonetheless unhappy and somewhat resentful about doing it — David Halberstam

In the old days, it had been talent and style and brilliance and now it was more and more productivity. — David Halberstam

Always stay in with the outs. — David Halberstam

Newspapers might have as much to do in shaping the course of public events as politicians, — David Halberstam

He knew, unlike most reporters, how to use pauses and the absence of words as effectively as the words themselves. — David Halberstam

These days there's all too much coverage of pesudo-events about extraordinarily inauthentic people doing inauthentic things. — David Halberstam

One percent of the population ruled - and they were all grafters - while the other ninety-nine percent live under the worst kind of feudalism. — David Halberstam

I have a great faith in the strength and the resilience in the American people. — David Halberstam

What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world. — David Halberstam

(I. F. Stone had once called it an exciting paper to read because you never knew on what page you would find a page-one story), — David Halberstam

She was more sure of her politics than she was of herself. — David Halberstam

She was young and scared, and hadn't realized there was time to spare. — David Halberstam

He was more passionate than most intelligent men, and more intelligent and reasoned than most passionate men. — David Halberstam

The networks at their worst (were) at once greedy and timid. — David Halberstam

He was very good, it turned out, at outlining the flaws in the government as long as someone else was in charge of the government. — David Halberstam

His was a profession in which a good leader constantly had to adapt to new weapons, whether he liked them or not, — David Halberstam

The author writes that the central conflict within journalist and seller of the American way Henry Luce was between his curiosity and his certitude. — David Halberstam

David Halberstam quoted Lyndon Johnson saying of a staffer: I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. — David Halberstam

The closer journalists came to great issues, the more vulnerable they felt. — David Halberstam

He wanted to be respectable rather than powerful; he did not want the controversy that went with power. — David Halberstam

All professions have some element of theater to them. — David Halberstam

The telephone was a sign of being rushed. — David Halberstam

Everyone else was trying to make things more complicated and Cronkite, typically, was trying to make them more simple. — David Halberstam

Memory is often less about the truth than about what we want it to be. — David Halberstam

The most dangerous thing about power is to employ it where it is not applicable. — David Halberstam

QUESTION: Do you know what the greatest test is? ANSWER:Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning? — David Halberstam

Research is an organized method of finding out what you are going to do when you can't keep on doing what you are doing now. — David Halberstam

If there is anything that is important to America, it is that you are not a prisoner of the past. — David Halberstam

The little things were not little things, because it was the accumulation of little things that made big things happen. — David Halberstam

Williams had a very shrewd sense of how much heat the organism could take at any given time; — David Halberstam

If you have to write it down, you don't know it well enough, — David Halberstam

He sensed that his own reticence would make it easier to restrain others. — David Halberstam

Education was central to reporting. — David Halberstam

A staff can be no better than the man it serves. — David Halberstam

Hughes might discuss Calvinism ably, but he did not live it, he was - by Time corporate standards - just a little lazy. — David Halberstam

If the norm of the society is corrupted, then objective journalism is corrupted too, for it must not challenge the norm. It must accept the norm. — David Halberstam

The truth posed a great dilemma for a man who always had to be right, and yet, for all his grandeur, was often wrong. — David Halberstam

Give people a break. It's not easy doing a life. — Joshua Halberstam

Sometimes the best virtue learned on the battlefield is modesty. — David Halberstam

This was the mark of an uncommon soldier, someone whose courage away from the battlefield was the same as that on it. — David Halberstam

Few sports has as great a disparity between the time committed in practice and time actually spent in game or race conditions. — David Halberstam

He was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance. — David Halberstam

He never, even in the most casual conversation with friends, spoke a sentence which did not sound as if it was ready for the air. — David Halberstam

ingenue whose career was winding down — David Halberstam

You could never prove innocence, not in the match with the man who only had to imply guilt. — David Halberstam

Lippmann was very good at staying young, at not aging and becoming a prisoner of his past experiences. — David Halberstam

If he had gone to the old school, he was by no means old-school. — David Halberstam

It was the kind of country that made you feel better about yourself. — David Halberstam

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones. — David Halberstam

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life. — David Halberstam

If the Times gave readers far more news, then Lippmann at the Trib made the world seem far more understandable. — David Halberstam

It was a wonderful combination for a reporter, the exterior so comforting, the interior so driven. — David Halberstam

Young man, Mr. Aubrey has made us so rich that we can now afford to worry about our image. — David Halberstam

He was perceived to be intellectually promiscuous, a little too eager to please all groups. — David Halberstam

If he (George Keenan)felt on occasion more than a little uncomfortable when being listened to, then he was truly unhappy when not being listened to. — David Halberstam