Quotes By Bob Schieffer

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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