Bob Schieffer Quotations

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.

It's getting the right person that's the challenge.

Well, you know, in any political campaign, you're gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it'll hurt the guy on the other side.

The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.

I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.

If you get asked a really tough question and you give a really good answer, you come off looking really good.

The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.

My job is to give everyone a chance to catch their breath and step back from all this and get back to work.

But if you don't enjoy doing something, you'll be miserable no matter how much money you make.

At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.

And I came away from that experience, and it was a very difficult experience - I came to understand that you have to practice at being a good father and practice at being a good husband, just as you have to practice at being a good journalist.

Once we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.

But here's the deal: If I were smart, I could figure out curling. If I were even smarter, I could figure out why people would actually watch other people doing it. I have tried. I can't. I can't even figure out the object of the game. Is it like darts? I just don't get it.

My bladder cancer was related to smoking, and I think smoking kills people.

And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.

I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.

One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something I enjoy?

They've asked me to do this temporarily. I don't know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.

I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.

I want to try to talk like normal people talk, not just stand there and bark at the camera.

But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate.

There's fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.

We're far from perfect. It's a human enterprise.

American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.

I had - all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a newspaper reporter because we didn't have much television in those days.

I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to do is be a reporter, the main reason you want to do it is because it's just so much fun.

In so many of the other beats these days, there are these layers of public relations people that you have to go through to get to the newsmakers themselves.

Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.

I mean, you know, God knows everything, but I'm not quite that good. Every once in a while, something will slip by me.

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

People are more sophisticated in the way they go about dealing with the press.

With Vietman, we found ourselves involved there before we really understood what was going on.

Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.

And as a result, I guess I'm just kind of a rubberneck. I'm kind of a - someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don't think journalists are as important as the people they cover.

Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates - they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can't blame them for that.

But if you're going to go out on a military unit, you've got to allow yourself to be under the control of the commander because you really could put the troops in danger.

For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what's important.

I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.

It's no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.

The best thing about the Congress is that it is the last place where you can have face-to-face interviews and interaction with the newsmakers themselves.

We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.

A police reporter walks into the worst moment in someone's life on every single story that he covers. It's not like being a sports reporter. That's a great job and all that and takes certain skills. But, you know, they're glad to see you when you show up to cover the football game. Nobody is ever glad to see a police reporter when he shows up.

Go vote now it will make you feel big and strong

But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.

A great deal of our ratings on the morning news are people who died during the night with their TV on.

I used to be a print reporter.

When Sam Snead was asked how to putt, he said, 'Putt for one hundred dollars'.

Talk about threats to national security -- how about government so big, so complicated and so unmanageable, it cant get out of its own way?

Whether or not the President is sleeping well won't be a factor in his re-election. That will depend on what he does while he is awake.

Good policy always trumps bad public relations. And the best PR can't trump bad policy.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game.

I guess the worst snow was the Kennedy inauguration in 1960. Heavy snow.

I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.

Mr. President, ... what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

I'd covered the campaign in 1988, and I'd managed to gain an even 20 pounds, which is one of the dangers you have covering those campaigns.

God knows where there is a safe place in Iraq.

I also think it's not just good for the American people to have independent observers along, I think it's also good for the military.

There are still a lot of things I want to do that have nothing to do with CBS. I'd like to come back for election coverage in 2008 -- but to work five days a week is not what I want to do.

I think we've come a tremendous distance here. We had been beaten about the heads and shoulders so badly for so long there that people were pretty quiet about the office. People are talking again. They're having more fun, and they're smiling more.

I think this is one of those deals that isn't done until it's done, and right now I don't think anybody really knows what Katie will decide. It's up to Katie to decide, and when she does, we'll all know.

I will be delighted if she came. I think she'll be a great addition to a very good news team ... I've known Katie for years and I think the world of her.

It does not seem to me like I've been doing this for a year. It seems like I've been doing it for two weeks.

It does not help in any way for me to get into some kind of a fight with the secretary of defense, since he is there,

Well, are they really thinking that maybe they could lose control of the House next time around?

You cannot be objective about human suffering and people dying. Any person who was not outraged by that, I'm not sure they have business being a reporter.

We talked about a thousand things, but we really talked about our parents. She is very close to her mother, and I was very close to my mother.

You have to put people in place here who are going to be here for ten or 15 years. That's not me.

Wars are not fought on the training ground, nor can they be covered from the television studio. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of both these brave men.

Wars are not fought on the training ground, nor can they be covered from a TV studio. They are not reality shows, they are reality. Young men and women have to fight them, and correspondents have to cover them if we are to understand what they are about.

I sometimes tell people, when I was hired at CBS, it was because I was a good writer, not whether I was or not was beside the point.

Prior to 9/11, everybody was talking about at least one of the evening news programs going away, that their future was very limited.

Anyway, that offer is not going to be made.

The most challenging aspect of it is not interviewing the people, but getting the right people at the right time to be interviewed.

It was the glamour beat; that's where you put your star reporter.

That's one thing I need to think about.

Every news organization, if it's aggressive and doing what it ought to be doing, is going to get caught with a bad story from time to time.

I kind of think this might be something fun to do, but I want to make absolutely sure that this is what I want to do.

I'm a big Katie fan, I've always been a big Katie fan.

But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.

But I'm not too old to continue moderating Face the Nation . I'll continue that indefinitely after the anchor duties are concluded.

He's got a great track record, ... He's innovative. He's a guy with ideas. He's made CBS Sports something we can all be proud of and he sets very high standards. I think all of that will translate very well.

I couldn't be happier. She's going to be a terrific addition to CBS News.