Walter Cronkite Quotes

Walter Cronkite Quotes

Famous Quotes by Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite Died Today

Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the evening TV news show called “The CBS Evening News” for many years (from 1962 until 1981) and became known as “the most trusted man in America.” Walter Cronkite’s most famous quote is this one which he used to end his broadcast for many years.

And that’s the way it is.
- Walter Cronkite

The complete sign-off was actually longer but many people do not remember that he actually said this:

“And that’s the way it is  – [the date]. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News; good night.”

Arizona State University has a school named after Walter Cronkite called the The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and that includes the Cronkite News Service, Cronkite NewsWatch, Multimedia Reporting Project, New Media Innovation Lab, Public Relations Lab and the recent addition of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

According to Wikipedia Walter Cronkite announced that he intended to retire from the CBS Evening News on February 14, 1980; at the time, CBS had a policy in place that called for mandatory retirement by age 65. Although sometimes compared to a father figure or an uncle figure, in an interview about his retirement he described himself as being more like a “comfortable old shoe” to his audience. By this, he meant that they could “comfortably put their foot in him like a slipper.” His last day in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News was on March 6, 1981; he was succeeded the following Monday by Dan Rather.

Walter Cronkite’s final broadcast ended with this statement:

Walter Cronkite Farewell Statement
“This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of The CBS Evening News; for me, it’s a moment for which I long have planned, but which, nevertheless, comes with some sadness. For almost two decades, after all, we’ve been meeting like this in the evenings, and I’ll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I’m afraid have made too much. This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job, and another, Dan Rather, will follow. And anyway, the person who sits here is but the most conspicuous member of a superb team of journalists; writers, reporters, editors, producers, and none of that will change. Furthermore, I’m not even going away! I’ll be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries, and, beginning in June, every week, with our science program, Universe. Old anchormen, you see, don’t fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that’s the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981. I’ll be away on assignment, and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night.”
- Walter Cronkite

Source: Wikipedia

More Famous Quotes Famous Sayings and Quotations attributed to and about Walter Cronkite follow. Please feel free to add any more you know about in the comments below.

There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.
- Walter Cronkite

Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day – 23 minutes – and that’s supposed to be enough.
- Walter Cronkite

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less.
- Walter Cronkite

This opens the door on another chapter of history.
- Walter Cronkite

Our job is only to hold up the mirror – to tell and show the public what has happened.
- Walter Cronkite

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
- Walter Cronkite

America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.
- Walter Cronkite

I am dumbfounded that there hasn’t been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.
- Walter Cronkite

Be kind to an old man.
- Walter Cronkite

The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck
- Walter Cronkite

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
- Walter Cronkite

The very first day we were there, … I started getting notes in my box to call this Bernard Shaw.
- Walter Cronkite

When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas – the idea of eternity.
- Walter Cronkite

Dan Rather and I just aren’t especially chummy.
- Walter Cronkite

The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.
- Walter Cronkite

Television is a high-impact medium. It does some things no other force can do-transmitting electronic pictures through the air. Still, as an explored, comprehensive medium, it is not a substitute for print.
- Walter Cronkite

In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.
- Walter Cronkite

There’s a little more ego involved in these jobs than people might realize.
- Walter Cronkite

I asked [my doctors] if I’d be able to play singles tennis and they said I could. That made me very happy since I haven’t played in five years.
- Walter Cronkite

I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.
- Walter Cronkite

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson

It is a seldom proffered argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.
- Walter Cronkite

Errol Flynn died on a 70-foot boat with a 17-year-old girl. Walter has always wanted to go that way, but he’s going to have to settle for a 17-footer with a 70-year-old.
- Walter Cronkite

When you’re bringing in a fairly unknown candidate challenging a sitting president, the population needs a lot more information than reduced coverage provides.
- Walter Cronkite

I’ve gone from the most trusted man in America to one of the most debated.
- Walter Cronkite

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.
- Walter Cronkite

I don’t think those things live forever with the public. They’re more likely to live with us journalists than the public itself.
- Walter Cronkite

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion….It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.
- Walter Cronkite

I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.
- Walter Cronkite

There’s a difference between that and showboating. There’s definitely [some] showboating. Usually it’s obvious, to us journalists anyway — whether it’s obvious to the public, I don’t know.
- Walter Cronkite

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