Ted Koppel

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have the necessary lack of tact.

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

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

Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives and if periodically you fail as you surely will adjust your lives not the standards.

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.

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.

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.

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

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: what is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time.

There's harmony and inner peace to be found in following a moral compass that points in the same direction regardless of fashion or trend.

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.

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