Ed Bradley Quotes (1941-2006)

“In a nutshell, Erhard's message was this: If you are in a rut, the problem isn't your parents, your boss or the system, it's you. Take responsibility, Erhard said, and you can transform your life overnight.”

“Aretha Franklin was tough. She turned out to be good, but she was, you know, she was -- she's a very -- she's a very wonderful, but in some ways, shy woman. You don't think about that when you see how she emotes and performs.”

“People know that they can tune in to "60 Minutes" any Sunday and know that they're going to learn something by watching the broadcast. They may not like every piece, they may not agree with every piece, but they'll say, huh, I didn't know that about something in there.”

“I've always said when I die and if I do get to the pearly gates and St. Peter says, what have you done to deserve entry, I'd ask him if he'd saw my Lena Horne piece. It's always been a favorite of mine.”

“Mr. President, this is Ed Bradley in New York. There are many people who would question our system of criminal justice today in the United States--in fact, many people who have lost faith in our criminal justice system. With so many people languishing on death row today for so many years, how can you say with such assurance that justice will be certain, swift, and severe?”

“Since the 1970s some seven-hundred-thousand people have signed up for a self-improvement called 'est', or as it's now called 'The Forum.' Est was the brainchild of a former used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg. Back in the sixties, Rosenberg deserted his wife and four children in Philadelphia, changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard, and moved to California where he started another family, and, came up with the idea for est.”

“I think the evening news broadcasts are very different today than they were 25-years-ago. I think that the advent of 24-hour cable television. You don't have to wait for 6:30 or 7:00 to get the national news. You can turn on cable any time and you're going to get it right away. And I think that that 24-hour continuous news cycle has affected the way that news is covered. And I'm not sure that that's always a good thing. It can be, but it's not always a good thing.”

“Before, when I was covering the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, we used to have what I call the three Ss. You would shoot a story, you would script a story, which is to write it and then ship the story. And if you were in Cambodia you'd go to the airport and try to find a pigeon to carry it out for you. Someone who was leaving Cambodia to go to either Bangkok or Saigon or Hong Kong because there wasn't the satellite technology. There was no uplinks then. Today, the second major change is also in personnel. Today you have so much satellite coverage you can report live why from a battlefield. Before you were often there just by yourself. Now you're likely to be with 20 other reporters. I just think there's more people out there covering the same story and covering it in a very different way because of the technological advances.”