James Reston Quotes
James Reston lays out plain-spoken observations on media, news and cultural clash.
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Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.
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People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace.
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The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.
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In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.
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A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.
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If it's far away, it's news, but if it's close at home, it's sociology.
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The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
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This is the very devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.
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In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.
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All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.
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A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
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Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.
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“In 1487 alone, two hundred heretics had-in one of the greatest euphemisms in the history of language-"relaxed," that is, burned at the stake. Dogs of God, Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors”