Jim Lehrer

I believe an invitation from the Commission on Presidential Debates is similar to a draft notice - a civic responsibility.

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid. I look at bus driving through the eyes of a little boy. I see it as glamorous.

On a daily basis there are some huge ones that are, sure, from time to time, but it is helping the reader sort through all this sort of gray stuff out there.

We have increasingly fewer and fewer journalists who have any military experience and understand what life is like in the military and in combat.

I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.

There's always a germ of truth in just about everything.

Everyone should get their news however they want to and in whatever form they want. I'm not going to sit back in judgment of other people and the way they do it.

A debate has one purpose one purpose only and that is to facilitate the exchange of ideas directly between two candidates and thats it.

You want to see an angry person? Let me hear a cell phone go off.

Theres only one interview technique that matters. Do your homework so you can listen to the answers and react to them and ask follow ups. Do your homework prepare.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.

I came from a family of Marines into the family of Marines.

Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they don't want bells and whistles there are places to go where they are not available.

People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

A debate has one purpose, one purpose only, and that is to facilitate the exchange of ideas directly between two candidates, and that's it.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

There's only one interview technique that matters... Do your homework so you can listen to the answers and react to them and ask follow-ups. Do your homework, prepare.

I always wear blue shirts and I like wine or purple ties.

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

My own view, there is a need for and a demonstrated need for more journalism now than there ever has been.

If you go to the ball game, you don't need to read the game story.

I started as a print reporter.

Those who know me know I won't hesitate to turn around and point someone out.

Most of the stories I have covered in 45 years have been gray stories.

I'm in the reporting part of journalism.

I'm a journalist and that's what I do.

If we're going to have debates, let's have real debates.

People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry.

There are very few really stark black and white stories.

I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.