Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of ideas and information in our lives.
Edward R. Murrow highlights the significance of cherishing and uplifting ideas and information, suggesting that they play a crucial role in shaping society and fostering progress. By encouraging a focus on the importance of knowledge, the quote advocates for a culture where intellectual curiosity and the dissemination of information are celebrated.
In practice
In a speech about the role of media in society, you might quote Murrow to emphasize how vital information is.
We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles.
Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.
Think about being a teenager and feeling like school is just about taking tests you may or may not be interested in, after which someone will judge whether or not you're smart. No one's going to be inspired by that.
Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
The assumption of all education is that learning will be directed toward constructive ends and I'm convinced that colleges should support students in their determination to be useful, self-sufficient, and productive.
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest.
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