You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.

You're feeling the responsibility for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on your shoulder in a way that I couldn't feel as lieutenant governor.

They're calling their Washington sources at the NRC or in Congress and they're not hesitating to give their opinion, but their opinion, frankly, in those early days was not very well informed.

Nobody could tell us or really had a very good idea, if there were a massive release of radiation, what kind of medical treatment people were going to need and this or that, or, indeed, whether there would be medical personnel around.

It took me 45 minutes to get in all of the suits and putting all the dosimeters on me so that they knew how much radiation I got and the protective boots and everything.

All of the information that we were getting up to that time from the NRC people, from our people who knew something about nuclear power, was that the breach of the core was not a likelihood to happen.

The first one, obviously, was walking into my office at eight o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, and being told there was a telephone call saying that there was an incident at Three Mile Island, and that it had shut down and that beyond that we didn't know.

And I remember walking in there and, I must say, I was quite unnerved the closer I got to it.

By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.

You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.

And it was at that point that I realized, in fact, our whole administration realized, that we could not rely on Metropolitan Edison for the kind of information we needed to make decisions.

My time inside there was very short compared to the amount of time it took to take on and take off this suit and to test me for how much radioactivity I have.

None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.

I was scheduled to give my first official press conference that morning anyway, 'cause I was chairman of the Governors Energy Council and I was making a press conference with regard to energy policy.

None of us are nuclear experts, but we know that if there is a melt-down and breach of containment, that's clearly the most odious thing that could happen.

What I had said in the morning was that this is what we know has happened, but there has been no significant off-site release. Only to find out moments later that, in fact, there had been an off-site release. I still haven't gotten over that.

There were schools and hospitals who were ready to take people with undescribed injuries, but not necessarily ready to take people with severe radiation poisoning.

There are allowable limits for radiation going - I mean there's radiation all around us. There's radiation from your television set. There's radiation from your computer. There's radiation actually occurring in the ground.

Another very strong image from the first day was giving my initial press conference in the morning - going down and finding out that everything I had said, the essence of what I had said, was wrong.

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.

But the issue became, how long do you keep the press waiting so that you can gather more information?

Obviously, I'm not looking in the core of the reactor, but I am looking at what, at that time, was considered the source of the trouble, which was the water and where it was.

And if you're not going to have a clear health threat, you don't want to panic people.

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant.

And at ten, or whatever time, in the morning we had the press conference, what we knew is there had been an incident at Three Mile Island, that it was shut down, that there was water that had escaped but it was contained.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and EPA, et cetera, had worked out what allowable releases are.

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

The fact is, Latinos now own their own lives and I believe they can afford to look back without judgment.

The Germans certainly - the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.

Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

What matters to us, the judgment of men? What have we to doubt, since we are pure before life?

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.

I was probably in the best shape of any athlete at the time, but you don't get to pass judgment on yourself.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

The original judgment of the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA was that there were three shots. I don't think that convinced us except as a statement by people, many of them who were familiar with ballistics. This question troubled me greatly.

The Lord Jesus will be revealed mightily, and will make bare his holy Arm, as well in the confusion of Antichrist, as in the conversion of the Jews, before the last judgment, and the end of all things.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.

I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.