Harold Evans People Quotations

The purpose of the book is to see what happened to America; both to the people in it, and to its relationships with the rest of the world.

When I was studying at Chicago and at Stanford University, where many many cases of two people observing the same event have a different take on what happened.

I had been at the newspaper for a few months. It wasn't regarded as the paper, it was their paper. There was a sense of community because they reported, we reported, I reported the little things, the whist drives, the weddings, the funerals, the little speeches. In one sense it was the most boring copy in the world to anyone picking it up, but, on the other hand, it was crucial to the people who lived in those communities.

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.

The democratization of news is fine and splendid, but it's not reporting. It's based on a fragment of information picked up from television or the web, and people are sounding off about something that's not necessarily true.

People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right?

By the end of this century, of course, America is the dominant world power, economically and militarily, and it has not only enlarged the freedoms of its own citizens -- which was very circumscribed in 1889 -- but by 1989 it has enlarged the freedoms of millions and millions of people around the world.

We're all told that people are busy, and have short attention spans, and yet these stories are so marvelous, and really ought to be read.