Ted Koppel's Quotes

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

To call something an 'enhanced interrogation technique' doesn't alter the fact that we thought it was torture when the Japanese used it on American prisoners, we thought it was torture when the North Koreans used it, we thought it was torture when the Soviets used it. You know, it's almost the moral equivalent of saying that rape is an enhanced seduction technique.

Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach.

Emotions get in the way but they don't pay me to start crying at the loss of 269 lives. They pay me to put some perspective on the situation.

I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years, and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming.

I have the necessary lack of tact.

I think we're glazing eyes all across America.

In the days of Caesar, kings had fools and jesters. Now network presidents have anchormen.

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.

People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

More than four thousand programs produced and consumed. Some of them were pretty good, a great many of them were forgettable; but a handful may even be worth a book.

My function is, as objectively and accurately as I can, to present reality to people out there, and doing that as quickly as we do is quite difficult enough, thank you.

There is no more respected or influential forum in the field of journalism than the New York Times. I look forward, with great anticipation, to contributing to its op-ed page.

There is something very very special, universal and easily identifiable among all Jews; it is beyond territory, it is something we all have in common.

If Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn't give a damn.

There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

This is still a man's profession, with a lot of men who intellectually and emotionally have not accepted that the military could be women's work.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

With Guard and Reserve units, you can end up with a lot of people from one part of the country dying in one day, and that gets people's attention.