Background Image

...

When The Eagle Landed On The Moon, I Was Speechless—overwhelmed, Like Most Of The World. Couldn't Say A Word. I Think All I Said Was, 'wow! Jeez!' Not Exactly Immortal. Well, I Was Nothing If Not Human.

-Walter Cronkite

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When The Eagle Landed

Walter Cronkite

...

When The Eagle Landed On The Moon, I Was Speechless—overwhelmed, Like Most Of The World. Couldn't Say A Word. I Think All I Said Was, 'wow! Jeez!' Not Exactly Immortal. Well, I Was Nothing If Not Human.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Walter Cronkite

There Is A Compulsion That Is Perhaps The Heart Of Life's Meanings, This Marvelous Mystery Of Blood Ties That Brings Joy Whenever A New Family Member Comes On The Scene.

Television [is] A High-impact Medium. It Does Some Things No Other Force Can Do-transmitting Electronic Pictures Through The Air. Still, As An Explored, Comprehensive Medium, It Is Not A Substitute For Print.

For Many Years, I Did My Best To Report On The Issues Of The Day In As Objective A Manner As Possible. When I Had My Own Strong Opinions, As I Often Did, I Tried Not To Communicate Them To My Audience.

Dan Rather And I Just Aren't Especially Chummy.

The Invasion Of Iraq Was Illegal From The Start.

Be Kind To An Old Man.

Freedom Of The Press Is Not Just Important To Democracy, It Is Democracy.

Our Job Is Only To Hold Up The Mirror - To Tell And Show The Public What Has Happened.

Probably The Most Important Single Element That I Found In My Own Marriage Was A Sense Of Humor. My Wife Had A Delicious Sense Of Humor, And I Think I Have An Adequate One.

In All My Years As A News Commentator I Was Never Once, Able To Tell The Truth, About Anything.

Justice Was Born Outside The Home And A Long Way From It; And It Has Never Been Adopted There

Television... Is Not A Substitute For Print.

It Is A Seldom Proffered Argument As To The Advantages Of A Free Press That It Has A Major Function In Keeping The Government Itself Informed As To What The Government Is Doing.

We Must Strengthen The United Nations As A First Step Toward A World Government, Patterned After Our Own Government With A Legislature, Executive And Judiciary, And Police To Enforce Its International Laws And Keep The Peace.

World Government

It Seems To Me That Instead Of Cutting Taxes, We Ought To Be Increasing The Taxes To Pay Off The Deficit, Rather Than Let That Thing Build Up To The Point Where Our Grandchildren's Grandchildren Are Going To Be Paying For Our Period Of Time And Our Years At The Helm.

There Is No Such Thing As A Little Freedom. Either You Are All Free, Or You Are Not Free.

Those Advocates Who Work For World Peace By Urging A System Of World Government Are Called Impractical Dreamers. Those Impractical Dreamers Are Entitled To Ask Their Critics What Is So Practical About War.

World Government

The Sweet Smell Of The South, Of Camellias And Azaleas, Clings To Beaufort's Ancient And Historic Buildings.

I Never Had The Ambition To Be Something. I Had The Ambition To Do Something.

I Am Dumbfounded That There Hasn't Been A Crackdown With The Libel And Slander Laws On Some Of These Would-be Writers And Reporters On The Internet.

We've Got A Great Percentage Of Our Population That, To Our Great Shame, Either Cannot Or, Equally Unfortunate, Will Not Read. And That Portion Of Our Public Is Growing. Those People Are Suckers For The Demagogue.

If We Are To Avoid That Catastrophe [a Nuclear World War Iii], A System Of World Order — Preferably A System Of World Government — Is Mandatory. The Proud Nations Someday Will See The Light And, For The Common Good And Their Own Survival, Yield Up Their Precious Sovereignty, Just As America's Thirteen Colonies Did Two Centuries Ago. When We Finally Come To Our Senses And Establish A World Executive And Parliament Of Nations, Thanks To The Nuremburg Precedent We Will Already Have In Place The Fundamentals For The Third Branch Of Government, The Judiciary.

Ethics Must Be Reintroduced To Public Service To Restore People's Faith In Government. Without Such Faith, Democracy Cannot Flourish. Your Ambitious Agenda Is Filling A Desperate Need.

Let Us Hear The Peal Of A New International Liberty Bell That Calls Us All To The Creation Of A System Of Enforceable World Law In Which The Universal Desire For Peace Can Place Its Hope And Prayers.

We Are On The Precipice Of Being So Ignorant That Our Democracy Is Threatened.

The Daily Coverage Of The Vietnamese Battlefield Helped Convince The American Public That The Carnage Was Not Worth The Candle.

For How Many Thousands Of Years Now Have We Humans Been What We Insist On Calling "civilized?" And Yet, In Total Contradiction, We Also Persist In The Savage Belief That We Must Occasionally, At Least, Settle Our Arguments By Killing One Another.

When Moses Was Alive, These Pyramids Were A Thousand Years Old. Here Began The History Of Architecture. Here People Learned To Measure Time By A Calendar, To Plot The Stars By Astronomy And Chart The Earth By Geometry. And Here They Developed That Most Awesome Of All Ideas - The Idea Of Eternity.

Old Anchormen, You See, Don't Fade Away. They Just Keep Coming Back For More. And That's The Way It Is, Friday, March 6, 1981.

Everything Is Being Compressed Into Tiny Tablets. You Take A Little Pill Of News Every Day-23 Minutes-and That's Supposed To Be Enough.

We're An Ignorant Nation Right Now. We're Not Really Capable, I Do Not Think, The Majority Of Our People, Of Making The Decisions That Have To Be Made At Election Time And Particularly In The Selection Of Their Legislatures And Their Congress And The Presidency, Of Course. I Don't Think We're Bright Enough To Do The Job That Would Preserve Our Democracy, Our Republic. I Think We're In Serious Danger.

I Think It Is Absolutely Essential In A Democracy To Have Competition In The Media, A Lot Of Competition, And We Seem To Be Moving Away From That.

To Say That We Are Closer To Victory Today Is To Believe, In The Face Of The Evidence, The Optimists Who Have Been Wrong In The Past.

Interviewing Friends Is A Tough One. Your Duty To The Interview Must Transcend Your Friendship. Occasionally You'll Lose A Friend.

I'm Still Ready To Go To The Moon, If They'll Take Me.

This Opens The Door On Another Chapter Of History.

We Are Not Educated Well Enough To Perform The Necessary Act Of Intelligently Selecting Our Leaders.

Reagan Was An Exceedingly Likeable Guy, Just A Heck Of A Nice Fellow, Despite His Politics. He Was Funny And Loved A Good Joke, The Dirtier, I'm Afraid The More Ethnic, The Better. I Don't Think He Brought Very Much To The Presidency, Except Charisma And Success.

I Was Lucky Enough To Have One Of The First High School Classes In The Country.

I Am Not A Contemplative Type, Basically. I Am Much More Of An Action Person And, As A Consequence, I Look Forward To Today And Tomorrow And What's Breaking.

Everybody Knows That There's A Liberal, That There's A Heavy Liberal Persuasion Among Correspondents.

Never Before Probably Has The Need For Interfaith Commitment Been Nearly As Great As It Is At This Very Moment.

Leaving San Francisco Is Like Saying Goodbye To An Old Sweetheart. You Want To Linger As Long As Possible.

The Battle For The Airwaves Cannot Be Limited To Only Those Who Have The Bank Accounts To Pay For The Battle And Win It.

I Sort Of Think In A Way That Many Of Us Young Reporters Who Had The Opportunity To Go Overseas For Our Organizations Were Kind Of, In A Sense, War Profiteers. We Were Enhancing Our Careers While Covering That Terrible Conflict.

I Want To Say That Probably 24 Hours After I Told Cbs That I Was Stepping Down At My 65th Birthday, I Was Already Regretting It. And I Regretted It Every Day Since.

The Ethic Of The Journalist Is To Recognize One's Prejudices, Biases, And Avoid Getting Them Into Print.

Putting It As Strongly As I Can, The Failure To Give Free Airtime For Our Political Campaigns Endangers Our Democracy.

It Is Not The Reporter's Job To Be A Patriot Or To Presume To Determine Where Patriotism Lies. His Job Is To Relate The Facts.

A System Of World Order-preferably A System Of World Government -is Mandatory... The Proud Nations Someday Will See The Light And, For The Common Good And Their Own Survival, Yield Up Their Precious Sovereignty.

World Government

Success Is More Permanent When You Achieve It Without Destroying Your Principles.

I Think Somebody Ought To Do A Survey As To How Many Great, Important Men Have Quit To Spend Time With Their Families Who Spent Any More Time With Their Family. Probably Less.

I Grew My Mustache When I Was Nineteen In Order To Look Older. I Never Shaved It Off Even Though It Overran Its Usefulness Many, Many Years Ago. Once You Get Started In Television, People Associate You With Your Physical Appearance - And That Includes The Mustache. So I Can't Shave It Off Now. If I Did, I'd Have To Answer Too Much Mail.

The Profession Of Journalism Ought To Be About Telling People What They Need To Know - Not What They Want To Know.

Pat Robertson Has Written In A Book A Few Years Ago That We Should Have A World Government, But Only When The Messiah Arrives. He Wrote, Literally, Any Attempt To Achieve World Order Before That Time Must Be The Work Of The Devil. Well Join Me - I’m Glad To Sit Here At The Right Hand Of Satan.

World Government

The Fact That You Are Here Tonight Gathered Together With Us Testifies To The Fact You Understand The Need For This Organization And The Need For Redoubling Our Efforts In This Organization To Try To Assure That Democracy As Represented By The United States Must Depend Upon A Total Freedom Of Religion, Which Is Written Into Our Constitution, Of Course, And The Mere Suggestion That Anyone Could Maintain That One's Patriotism, One's Devotion To One's Country Can Be Judged By One's Religion Is So Vile, So Vile That We Have To Take To The Streets Indeed And To Put It Aside.

We've Always Known You Can Gain Circulation Or Viewers By Cheapening The Product, And Now You're Finding The Bad Driving Out The Good.

I Don't Think People Ought To Believe Only One News Medium. They Ought To Read And They Ought To Go To Opinion Journals And All The Rest Of It. I Think It's Terribly Important That This Be Taught In The Public Schools, Because Otherwise, We're Gonna Get To A Situation Because Of Economic Pressures And Other Things Where Television's All You've Got Left. And That Would Be Disastrous. We Can't Cover The News In A Half-hour Event Evening. That's Ridiculous.

Whatever The Cost Of Our Libraries, The Price Is Cheap Compared To That Of An Ignorant Nation.

I Guess I Showed Certain Signs Of Being A Workaholic In Early Years; I Had A Magazine Route Very Early On - I Must Have Been About Seven Or Eight Years Old Or Something Like That - When I Was Carrying Liberty Magazine, Trying To Win Green And Brown Coupons; I Eventually [won] A Pony.

We Know That No One Should Tell A Woman She Has To Bear An Unwanted Child. We Know That Religious Beliefs Cannot Define Patriotism.

The Ruling Class Is The Rich. . . . And Those People Are So Able To Manipulate Our Democracy That They Really Control The Democracy.

The First Priority Of Humankind In This Era Is To Establish An Effective System Of World Law That Will Assure Peace With Justice Among The Peoples Of The World.

For Many Years, I Did My Best To Report On The Issues Of The Day In As Objective A Manner As Possible. When I Had My Own Strong Opinions, As I Often Did, I Tried Not To Communicate Them To My Audience. Now, However, My Circumstances Are Different. I Am In A Position To Speak My Mind. And That Is What I Propose To Do.

If That Is What Makes Us Liberals, So Be It, Just As Long As In Reporting The News We Adhere To The First Ideals Of Good Journalism - That News Reports Must Be Fair, Accurate And Unbiased.

The Debates Are Part Of The Unconscionable Fraud That Our Political Campaigns Have Become A Format That Defies Meaningful Discourse. They Should Be Charged With Sabotaging The Electoral Process.

When You're Bringing In A Fairly Unknown Candidate Challenging A Sitting President, The Population Needs A Lot More Information Than Reduced Coverage Provides.

It Is Clear That Military Force And Our Policy Of Preemption Are Alone Insufficient To Make Us Safe. But Help Is On The Way. Legislation Has Been Proposed To Create A Us Department Of Peace. In The Propsed Department Of Peace It Would Organize Our Present System Into One Conscious Effort To Improve Humanity In Achieving Peace, Where True Safety Lies.

And That's The Way It Is.

People Who Understand Music Hear Sounds That No One Else Makes When Frank Sinatra Sings.

Would It Be Better To Have A President Who Cries Easily? Well, That Depends On What He Cried About. I Would Not Like The Thought Of A President Who Could Not Cry. That Would Be Worse Than One Who Cried Over The Right Things. Which, In This Case, Would Be The Things I Would Cry Over.

Terrible, It Was Terrible. Even Today And It's Been Several Months Now You Just Bring It Up And I Tear Up A Little Bit, Terribly. You Know When You're That Close That Long And Got Along As Well As We Did, We Seldom Had Any Serious Arguments. We Might Have - Might Discuss Which Movie We Wanted To See And What Play We Wanted To Go To, Where We Ought To Go For A Vacation But That Usually Didn't Last Very Long Because We Were Much Of The Same Mind All The Time.

When The Eagle Landed On The Moon, I Was Speechless—overwhelmed, Like Most Of The World. Couldn't Say A Word. I Think All I Said Was, 'wow! Jeez!' Not Exactly Immortal. Well, I Was Nothing If Not Human.

In Seeking Truth You Have To Get Both Sides Of A Story.

It Seems To Rise Again When The Crisis Times Come, And This Is A Time Of Most Severe Crisis, As We All Know, Not Just For The History Of The United States And The Survival Indeed Of Our Democracy, But For The Future Peace Of The World. And Never Before Probably Has The Need For Interfaith Commitment Been Nearly As Great As It Is At This Very Moment.

Not Only Do We Have A Right To Know, We Have A Duty To Know What Our Government Is Doing In Our Name. If There's A Criticism To Be Made Today, It's That The Press Isn't Doing Enough To Put The Pressure On The Government To Provide Information.

I Am Neither Republican Nor Democrat. I Am A Registered Independent Because I Find That I Cast My Votes Not On The Basis Of Party Loyalty But On The Issues Of The Moment And My Assessment Of The Candidates.

We're Living In A State Where No One Can Trust His Telephone Conversations, Nor Even His Personal Conversations In A Room, In A Bar Or Anywhere Else.

America's Health Care System Is Neither Healthy, Caring, Nor A System.

I'm A Romanticist In Many Ways. I Never Get Behind The Wheel Of My Boat And Dropping The Anchor Without Saying To Myself, Secretly Giving My Orders To The Crew "all Right, Lift The Anchor, We're On Our Way To South Hampton. We're Gonna Beat Them There With This Load Of Tea!"

It Seems To Many Of Us That If We Are To Avoid The Eventual Catastrophic World Conflict We Must Strengthen The United Nations As A First Step Toward A World Government Patterned After Our Own Government With A Legislature, Executive And Judiciary, And Police To Enforce Its International Laws And Keep The Peace. To Do That, Of Course, We Americans Will Have To Yield Up Some Of Our Sovereignty. That Would Be A Bitter Pill. It Would Take A Lot Of Courage, A Lot Of Faith In The New Order.

World Government

The Great Sadness Of My Life Is That I Never Achieved The Hour Newscast, Which Would Not Have Been Twice As Good As The Half-hour Newscast, But Many Times As Good.

I Think Most Newspapermen By Definition Have To Be Liberal; If They're Not Liberal, By Definition Of It, Then They Can Hardly Be Good Newspapermen. If They're Preordained Dogmatists For A Cause, Then They Can't Be Very Good Journalists.

I'd Like To Be A Song And Dance Man.

As Anchorman Of The Cbs Evening News, I Signed Off My Nightly Broadcasts For Nearly Two Decades With A Simple Statement: "and That's The Way It Is." To Me, That Encapsulates The Newsman's Highest Ideal: To Report The Facts As He Sees Them, Without Regard For The Consequences Or Controversy That May Ensue.

The Perils Of Duck Hunting Are Great- Especially For The Duck.

I Think He [composer Joe Raposo] Was The First Man Who Kissed Me On The Cheek.

It Seems Now More Certain Than Ever That The Bloody Experience Of Vietnam Is To End In A Stalemate.

For Nearly Five Decades The World Federalists Have Worked To Promote A Strengthened Un And More Effective Institutions Of Global Governance. I Offer My Personal Endorsement. Now A Great Opportunity Has Opened For The Realization Of The Dreams Of The Un's Founders.

We Are The Lucky Generation. We First Broke Our Earthly Bonds And Ventured Into Space. From Our Descendants- Perches On Other Planets Or Distant Space Cities, They Will Look Back At Our Achievement With Wonder At Our Courage And Audacity And With Appreciation At Our Accomplishments, Which Assured The Future In Which They Live.

Attorney General John Ashcroft Has Earned Himself A Remarkable Distinction As The Torquemada Of American Law. Tomás De Torquemada...was Largely Responsible For...[the] Torture And The Burning Of Heretics — Muslims In Particular. Now, Of Course, I Am Not Accusing The Attorney General Of Pulling Out Anyone's Fingernails Or Burning People At The Stake (at Least I Don't Know Of Any Such Cases). But One Does Get The Sense These Days That The Old Spaniard's Spirit Is Comfortably At Home In Ashcroft's Department Of Justice.

I Am A News Presenter, A News Broadcaster, An Anchorman, A Managing Editor - Not A Commentator Or Analyst. I Feel No Compulsion To Be A Pundit.

I Have Never Pretended To Be A Great Writer. I Am Totally Immodest About Being A Great Reporter And A Good News Writer. I Write Fast And I Write Accurately, Nearly As Accurately As Anybody Can Be, And That's My Skill.

Objective Journalism And An Opinion Column Are About As Similar As The Bible And Playboy Magazine.

The 60s Undoubtedly Were The Most Turbulent Years Of The Century.

Our Task Is Not To Tell The Truth; We Are Opinion Molders.

Telling The Truth

A Handful Of Us Determine What Will Be On The Evening News Broadcasts, Or, For That Matter, In The New York Times Or Washington Post Or Wall Street Journal. Indeed It Is A Handful Of Us With This Awesome Power.and Those [news Stories] Available To Us Already Have Been Culled And Re-culled By Persons Far Outside Our Control.

Everybody Knows That There's A Liberal, That There's A Heavy Liberal Persuasion Among Correspondents.....anybody Who Has To Live With The People, Who Covers Police Stations, Covers County Courts, Brought Up That Way, Has To Have A Degree Of Humanity That People Who Do Not Have That Exposure Don't Have, And Some People Interpret That To Be Liberal. It's Not A Liberal, It's Humanitarian And That's A Vastly Different Thing.

I Think That Being Liberal, In The True Sense, Is Being Nondoctrinaire, Nondogmatic, Noncomitted To A Cause But Examining Each Case On Its Merits. Being Left Of Center Is Another Thing; It's A Political Position. I Think Most Newspapermen By Definition Have To Be Liberal; If They're Not Liberal, By My Definition Of It, Then They Can Hardly Be Good Newspapermen.

News Reporters Are Certainly Liberal And Left Of Center.

We Cannot Defer This Responsibility To Posterity. Time Will Not Wait.

Our Country Today Is At A Stage In Our Foreign Policy Similar To That Crucial Point In Our Nation's Early History When Our Constitution Was Produced In Philadelphia.

To Say That We Are Closer To Victory Today Is To Believe In The Face Of The Evidence, The Optimists Who Have Been Wrong In The Past. To Say That We Are Mired In Stalemate Seems The Only Realistic, Yet Unsatisfactory, Conclusion. It Is Increasingly Clear To This Reporter That The Only Rational Way Out Then Will Be To Negotiate, Not As Victors, But As An Honorable People Who Lived Up To Their Pledge To Defend Democracy, And Did The Best They Could.

Not Only Do We Have A Right To Know, We Have A Duty To Know What Our Government Is Doing In Our Name.

I Asked [my Doctors] If I'd Be Able To Play Singles Tennis And They Said I Could. That Made Me Very Happy Since I Haven't Played In Five Years.

I'm Very Proud Of What Harry Truman Turned Out To Be In Office And The Record He Made. Certainly I Think He'll Go Down In History As One Of The Greats, Because Of His Conscience, His Determination To Stick With What He Knew Was Right.

So Now The Question Is, Basically, Right Now, How Will The Osama Bin Laden Tape Affect The Election? And I Have A Feeling That It Could Tilt The Election A Bit. In Fact, I'm A Little Inclined To Think That Karl Rove, The Political Manager At The White House, Who Is A Very Clever Man, That He Probably Set Up Bin Laden To This Thing.

I've Gone From The Most Trusted Man In America To One Of The Most Debated.

Trending Author

Category