Edwin Newman quotes:

Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as "the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other.

Abraham Lincoln was on the side of the social scientists when he said, "God must have loved the people of lower and middle socioeconomic status, because he made such a multiplicity of them.

Many Americans feel themselves inferior in the presence of anyone with an English accent, which is why an English accent has become fashionable in television commercials; it is thought to sound authoritative.

In Washington, as we learned from the White House transcripts, a president may speak of kicking butts, call a problem a can of worms, decide not to be in the position of basically hunkering down, anticipate something hitting the fan, propose to tough it through, sight minefields down the road, see somebody playing hard ball, claim political savvy, and wonder what stroke some of his associates have with others.

William F. Buckley, Jr. does not speak so much as exhale, but he exhales polysyllabically, and the results are remarkable.

In a decade, America's mighty rivers will have reached the boiling point.

We live in a big and marvelously varied world. Television ought to reflect that.

Language is in decline. Not only has eloquence departed but simple, direct speech as well, though pomposity and banality have not.

Few things concentrate the mind more efficiently than the necessity of saying what you mean. It brings you face to face with what you are talking about, what you are actually proposing. It gets you away from the catch phrases that not merely substitute for thought but preclude it.

Those for whom words have lost their value are likely to find that ideas have also lost their value.

Will America be the death of English? I'm glad I asked me that. My well-thought-out mature judgment is that it will.

Not communicating saves energy; it keeps people from worrying about things they cannot do anything about; and it eliminates an enormous amount of useless talk.

To harness the power of television for the education of our nation's children, everyone must get involved - television programmers, government leaders, teachers, and above all, parents.