Quotes By Jim Lehrer

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

Those who know me know I won't hesitate to turn around and point someone out.

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid. I look at bus driving through the eyes of a little boy. I see it as glamorous.

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.

No two people see things the same way.

There's only one interview technique that matters... Do your homework so you can listen to the answers and react to them and ask follow-ups. Do your homework, prepare.

In my case, I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

I'm not in the being-annoyed business.

A skill required to be president is to explain to the American people any given thing they do.

There are very few really stark black and white stories.

I'm a journalist and that's what I do.

There's always a germ of truth in just about everything.

The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story.

I came from a family of Marines into the family of Marines.

Preparation is based on one driving force for me and that is to be relaxed enough to be able to listen to what the candidates are saying and react appropriately.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.

People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story.

You want to see an angry person? Let me hear a cell phone go off.

One of the problems is that everybody is used to the old-fashioned debate system, which is very controlled, and where the moderator plays a more active role.

In television there are only about 12 people who do what I do.

I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.

The death rate among Marines in Iraq has been more than double that of the other services.

I started as a print reporter.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

Well, to tell you truth, I have learned a long time ago that the trick when doing a debate, any kind of debate, is to just turn off the judgment switch in my head.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

Most of the gaffes I've made have not been funny - they've been stupid.

I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.

People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry.