Peter Jennings Quotes

By 1957 97% of all marriageable men and women were married, and if they cared to have a social life, they stayed that way.

Are we out of step with the administration because we do not comport completely to their political point of view?... So they criticize us for it. It goes with the territory, and if we get a groundswell we begin to look at ourselves.

Good evening. We begin tonight...

I don't think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization.

Seems like yesterday; seems like forever—all at the same time. It's sort of, how do you measure it? Do you measure the fact that I'm 20 years older? No. I think I measure it by the events. You know, I came just as the Cold War was coming to an end. When you think about the events that we've been through, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to, I guess you'd say, 9/11 being the culmination at the end of that — of that scope — what extraordinary changes there have been.

1. I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

2. Don't be confused that my interest in religion, faith, and spirituality is driven by any sense of faith or spirituality of my own.

3. I am sensitive to the value of faith and religion and spirituality in people's lives because I'm a journalist.

4. Have a sense of humor about life - you will need it. And be courteous.

5. A couple of weeks is a long time in American politics.

6. I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

7. I am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits

There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.

We have been criticized, a little bit to my surprise, by people who think I was not enough pro-war. That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.

My dad was part of the pioneers of public broadcasting in Canada. And he always told me the most important thing you can be in your career is fair. So we all start to see a box and hope that we see the box in the same way. But you recognize in time that people see the box or they see traffic accidents in entirely different ways. So you train yourself over the years to try and give accounting to the variety... and come to some decent place in the middle. But I'm not a slave to objectivity. I'm never quite sure what it means. And it means different things to different people.

"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective," Jennings said. Jennings said that everyone — even journalists — have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible. "And when we don't think we can be fully objective, to be fair."

On 9/11, those of us who do the jobs that I do, flew without a net for hour and hour and hour after end. And then you hope and pray that you've had the experience to be up to it. Because then you're editor, analyst, reporter, correspondent, ringmaster, the whole thing.

When I came to the states in the mid 1960s — 1964, 1964 — I didn't think I'd be here maybe a couple years, going to have a great experience in the United States and then go back to Canada. Well, here we are 40 years later.

I have never spent a day in my adult life where I didn't learn something, and if there is a born-again quality to me, that's it.

There will be good days and bad, which means that some days I may be cranky and some days really cranky!