Your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.
Interpretation
The extent of your audience does not determine the value of your insights.
Edward R. Murrow's quote emphasizes that having a larger platform or audience does not inherently mean that one's ideas or opinions are more insightful or wise. It suggests that true wisdom is independent of how far one's voice can reach and instead resides in the depth and quality of what is being communicated.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of social media, one could use this quote to illustrate the idea that popularity does not equal wisdom.
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.
It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.
Oh, to have “the word of Christ” always dwelling inside of us;-in the memory, never forgotten; in the heart, always loved; in the understanding, really grasped; with all the powers and passions of the mind fully submitted to its control!
The knowledge of all things is possible
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there.
During a Chess competition a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk
Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.
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