Christiane Amanpour Quotations

I leave CNN with the utmost respect, love and admiration for the company and everyone who works here. This has been my family and shared endeavor for the past 27 years, and I am forever grateful and proud of all that we have accomplished.

And I believe that good journalism, good television, can make our world a better place.

Because if we the storytellers don't do this, then the bad people will win.

We hear foreign accents on CNN. It's crazy, it's wild, who knows, maybe they'll take you because you certainly don't fit in, in the American spectrum of news.

We were thrilled and we were privileged to be part of a revolution, because make no mistake about it, Ted Turner changed the world with CNN.

But 17 years ago, I arrived at CNN with a suitcase, with my bicycle, and with about 100 dollars.

Yes, you are running businesses, and yes, we understand and accept that, but surely there must be a level beyond which profit from news is simply indecent.

If we have no respect for our viewers, then how can we have any respect for ourselves and what we do?

We do it because we're committed, because we're believers.

I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.

They take journalism really seriously because they know the force that it is and can be.

In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

Here in the United States, our profession is much maligned, people simply don't trust or like journalists anymore and that's sad.

What we do and say and show really matters.

In Iran the whole reform and democracy movement has been based on the emerging free press.

'm thrilled to be joining the incredible team at ABC News. Being asked to anchor 'This Week' and the superb tradition started by David Brinkley, is a tremendous and rare honor, and I look forward to discussing the great domestic and international issues of the day.

I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories, not to run stories, that people have risked their lives to get.

If you have a child, I said, you have a responsibility at least to stay alive.

We manage the fear, I manage the fear, but it certainly takes its toll, the strain does.

And I really believe good journalism is good business.

I'm not an American but I have always had the outsiders' respect for the American people and the American way.

In Bosnia, little children shot in the head by a guy who thinks it's okay to aim his gun at a child.

Our industry has invested so much money in technology that perhaps it's time to invest in talent, in people.

We in the press, by our power, can actually undermine leadership.

And one thing that I always believed and that I knew for certain was that I could never have sustained a personal relationship while I worked this hard, or while I was that driven this intensely by the story.

U.S. soldiers, with whom I now have more than a passing acquaintance, joke that they track my movements in order to know where they will be deployed next.

Would you accept shared sovereignty of Washington? ... You accept London being shared?

Let's see what they're carrying first, ... It's just water.

Somalis themselves feel that they are under some sort of what they call psychological warfare. They know that at last the word is out that Somalia may be a next likely target.

She is in custody and is getting no special treatment. She will go to the court on Thursday to enter a plea.

Milosevic was at times impassioned, caustic and sarcastic

No detail was too small for him to chase and to check, ... He was dedicated and brave and brilliant, and he had a deep strain of wisdom and conscience.

More times than I care to remember I have sympathized with too many of them assigned like myself, to some of the world's royal bad places.

Now that the tribunal has (former Yugoslav president Slobodan) Milosevic in the dock, the prosecutor (Carla del Ponte) is being more and more direct in her demands that the two most wanted suspects be brought in now.

I was showing a man and telling his story and explaining how ill he was, and it was a live camera and all of a sudden I realized that he was dying.

But think how much more of a contribution we could make to this great society if we weren't so dependent on what I call those hocus-focus-pocus awful groups who tell us what people are not interested in.

I have lost many friends and I've seen many, many more wounded, by snipers, by mortar shells, by landmines and by the crazed Kalashnikov-wielding druggies at checkpoints.

We thrived as I said on the pioneer spirit of CNN. We adored being the little network that could.

It is clear that his testimony is targeted at Serbian public opinion.

Little did we know then that CNN would become the big league.

I wish that our news organizations would give a lot more attention and time and space to stories from around the world, because it couldn't be more important.

I still have many years left in me, if I still have a job, but that's what I'll tell my son when he's old enough to torture me with painful questions.

That was seven years ago. I have been married two years and I have a five-month-old son now.

I was planning, I told everybody, to take him on the road with me. At the very least I fully expected to keep up my hectic pace, and my passion as a war correspondent.

We are the first eyes, the first ears, the first to tell a certain story because without us who? Without us who?,

We understand that Serbs will be elected who will continue with the same policy to divide Bosnia, ... but we will have them around the table fighting with arguments instead of fighting with guns.

Why have we given George W. Bush such an easy ride when-until now, that is-when actually his qualifications are questionable?

We will be correct all the way through and professional all the way through, but there is a very strong power behind us,

We, I believe, are in the fight of our lives to save this profession which we love. I believe we can do it, and I believe we can win this battle.

And yet, the powers that be, the moneymen, have decided to eviscerate us.

European leaders are expected to disagree with Bush's olive branch.

They accused you of being in the KLA?

the world as a whole is prepared to act.

Sadly, marriage and motherhood have coincided with the demise of journalism as I knew it and I dreamt that it would always be.

same kind of defiance as in his previous two appearances.

now is a crucial stage of the peace process

Now, ... now that we've got that sorted out, can we all go inside?

And then there's always the crying and the weeping that we hear-children, women, even men. And these images and these sounds are always with me.

It wasn't noisy and it wasn't with much resistance, but he stared them down and walked out with them on either side rather than rather than them handling him,

It occurred to me that I have spent almost every working day of the past ten years living in a state of repressed fear.

It's bigger, stronger and louder than last night,

No matter what the hocus-pocus focus groups tell you, time has proven that all the gimmicks and all the cheap journalism can only carry us so far.

It transpired that Saddam Hussein was attempting to make some kind of speech or have some kind of discussion with the judge outside of what the judge had directly asked him,

His hair is black, as it's always been, his beard was black with significant gray ... a good deal older and weaker and more frail than he looked the last time I saw him come into court in the summer of 2004 when he came for his initial hearing.

But to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.

But to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.

We turn now over the debate of the proposed Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero....The controversy has raised profound questions about religious tolerance and prejudice in the United States.

Because I am foreign I was assigned to the foreign desk. I kid you not, its true.

Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

People are interested if you tell stories well and relevantly.

What Americans don't care much about is the piffle we put on TV these days, what they don't care about is boring, irrelevant, badly told stories, and what they really hate is the presumption that they're too stupid to know the difference.

Im not an American but I have always had the outsiders respect for the American people and the American way.

U.S. soldiers, with whom I now have more than a passing acquaintance, joke that they track my movements in order to know where they will be deployed next.

Mostly, as I said, a desire to do a bit of good, and the quaint notion that this is what we signed up for, this is the business that we have chosen.

I'm thrilled to be joining the incredible team at ABC News. Being asked to anchor 'This Week' and the superb tradition started by David Brinkley, is a tremendous and rare honor, and I look forward to discussing the great domestic and international issues of the day.

Indeed in the full flush of journalistic passion and conviction I once told an interviewer that of course I would never get married. And I most definitely would never have children.

And then theres always the crying and the weeping that we hear-children, women, even men. And these images and these sounds are always with me.

I have made my living bearing witness to some of the most horrific events of the end of our century, at the end of the 20th century.

Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well, this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it, but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there, and we had to tell the truth.

I believe America will always win the war. It's a superpower that no one can challenge. The real challenge is for the United States to win the peace.

For instance, why are we terrorizing this country, leading with murder and mayhem, when crime is actually on the decline, as somebody, as somebody mentioned?

I was really just the tea boy to begin with, or the equivalent thereof, but I quickly announced, innocently but very ambitiously, that I wanted to be, I was going to be, a foreign correspondent.

Objectivity means trying to give all sides a hearing. It does not, in my view, mean treating all sides as equal.

I strongly believe that journalism is one of the most noble professions, because without an informed world, and without an informed society, we are weak, we are weak.

Perhaps the most important thing I could say is to never be thrown by failure and mistakes. Each and everything that happens, even if it was not what you hoped would happen, is a valuable, life-learning tool. And you will only achieve success if you know how to learn from your failures and mistakes. It’s vital.

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

I am personally thrilled though by the changes at CNN, which no doubt you have all read about. because it means we are responding to the times.

I am no longer sure that when I go out there and do my job it'll even see the light of air, if the experience of my network colleagues is anything to go by.

And I worked my way up through every level. I was a writer, I was a producer, I was a field producer, I was a reporter and I am a reporter.