1.
If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
Linda Ellerbee
2.
If you believe in your heart that you are right, you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.
Linda Ellerbee
3.
Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.
Linda Ellerbee
4.
The new national campfire - radio.
Linda Ellerbee
5.
A good time to laugh is any time you can.
Linda Ellerbee
6.
What I like most about change is that it's a synonym for 'hope'. If you're taking a risk, what you are really saying is, 'I believe in tomorrow and I will be the part of it.
Linda Ellerbee
7.
In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.
Linda Ellerbee
8.
I want to know why, if men rule the world, they don't stop wearing neckties.
Linda Ellerbee
9.
When the anchorman is wearing a colonel's uniform, it tells you something.
Linda Ellerbee
10.
I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.
Linda Ellerbee
11.
We plant a tree that won't be big enough to climb until we're too old to climb trees, we write constitutions to protect the rights of people who won't be born for another hundred years and may not be worth the trouble anyway, and we try to take care of our sick, though we all suffer from a disease for which there is no cure and no hope for one. We will not last and we know we will not - and still we write, carve, build, paint and plant to last. We are, it seems to me, very, very brave.
Linda Ellerbee
12.
People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.
Linda Ellerbee
13.
Some of my colleagues want to be The Anchorman on the Mount. Others see themselves as the Ace Reporter. Because of 60 Minutes, there's a whole herd of them determined to be The Grand Inquisitor and a heady number want only to be The Friendliest Anchor on the Block. At least one wants to be Jesus.
Linda Ellerbee
14.
When there is good news, and it is news , we do report it, but usually news is a record of human failure. Those wanting to celebrate human accomplishment are, as someone said, advised to go to the sports section.
Linda Ellerbee
15.
[My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since.
Linda Ellerbee
16.
Only dead fish swim with the stream all of the time.
Linda Ellerbee
17.
There are two types of change: the change we choose and the change that chooses us.
Linda Ellerbee
18.
Like Nietzsche, I believe that without music, life would be a mistake. Nothing but silence says it better.
Linda Ellerbee
19.
The best time to laugh is anytime you can.
Linda Ellerbee
20.
I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.
Linda Ellerbee
21.
Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.
Linda Ellerbee
22.
in television the product is not the program; the product is the audience and the consumer of that product is the advertiser. The advertiser does not 'buy' a news program. He buys an audience.
Linda Ellerbee
23.
A few weeks after my surgery, I went out to play catch with my golden retriever. When I bent over to pick up the ball, my prosthesis fell out. The dog snatched it, and I found myself chasing him down the road yelling "Hey, come back here with my breast!"
Linda Ellerbee
24.
I believe in tomorrow and I will be part of it.
Linda Ellerbee
25.
I've heard it said that the first law of journalism is to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.
Linda Ellerbee
26.
I think laughter may be a form of courage.
Linda Ellerbee
27.
Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn't.
Linda Ellerbee
28.
It's not brain surgery. It's not nuclear physics. It's television. It's only television.
Linda Ellerbee
29.
if you don't want to get old, don't mellow.
Linda Ellerbee
30.
I am not for abortion; nobody is for abortion. I am for your right to make your own hard choices in this world.
Linda Ellerbee
31.
Time doesn't go. Time stays. We go.
Linda Ellerbee
32.
Just because it's a rat race doesn't mean it's okay to be a rat.
Linda Ellerbee
33.
'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone?
Linda Ellerbee
34.
Always remember to set a place at the table of life for the unexpected guest.
Linda Ellerbee
35.
Co-dependence...taking someone else's temperature to see how you feel.
Linda Ellerbee
36.
I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.
Linda Ellerbee
37.
There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.
Linda Ellerbee
38.
It's not just the cheerleading thing I have a problem with, it's the whole jock enchilada. I'm all for a good game of basketball in teh driveway or a killer bike ride. But when there's tackling and grunting involved-- no thanks.
Linda Ellerbee
39.
Pitching was about fooling people, manipulating them, making them believe in something that ultimately wasn't there. Great pitching was great lying.
Linda Ellerbee
40.
Change, like youth, is purely wasted on the young.
Linda Ellerbee
41.
The whole town looks as if it had been left out in the rain too long and by mistake.
Linda Ellerbee
42.
Presumably a movement is more polite than a revolution, and a lot slower.
Linda Ellerbee
43.
Putting people in a room and strapping wires to their wrist to find out if I make them tingle when I'm telling them about Beirut is a long way from Edward R. Murrow.
Linda Ellerbee
44.
We tried to do the news without frills, without fluffy hairdos, without graphics. It does say something about our business that is not very pretty. It didn't matter how good the show was. What counted was money.
Linda Ellerbee
45.
Dreck is dreck and no amount of fancy polish is going to make it anything else.
Linda Ellerbee
46.
How is it that so often . . . I get the feeling I've worked hard to learn something I already know, or knew, once.
Linda Ellerbee