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• Conservatives-- or better, pro-corporate apologists-- hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove-- the reputed brain of George W. Bush-- as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.
  • Speech to the "Take Back America" Conference, June 10, 2003 http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm
  • "Degenerate and unlovely age" is a quotation from Charles Eliot Norton
• The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won... Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero.
  • Interview, October 28, 2003 http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/10/int03281.html
• No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism.
  • Speech to the Society of Professional Journalists, September 11, 2004
  • On polls showing that many Americans would support a restriction of free speech especially if against speech held to be unpatriotic.
• This 'zeal for secrecy' I am talking about – and I have barely touched the surface – adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear – as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban – they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of the press – that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg.
  • Speech to the Society of Professional Journalists, September 11, 2004
• On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths — half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.
  • Broadcast December 17, 2004 http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript351_full.html
  • Concerning right-wing radio shortly before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election.
• Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
  • Speech at the National Conference on Media Reform, May 15, 2005 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-34.htm
• A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans, liberals & conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
  • Speech at the National Conference on Media Reform, May 15, 2005 http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
• News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.
  • Speech at the National Conference on Media Reform, May 15, 2005 http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
  • Quoting an adage widely attributed to the newspaper-owner Lord Northcliffe
• People who don't believe in government are likely to defile government.
  • 2008-11-05 interview on Fresh Air commenting on the Bush Administration and the Harding Administration