26+ David Halberstam Quotes On Education, Religion And A Quagmire

David Halberstam was an American journalist and author who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting on the Vietnam War. He wrote more than 20 books, including The Best and the Brightest, which is considered one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam War. He was known for his meticulous reporting, which often focused on the effects of American foreign policy. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David Halberstam on leadership, education, religion.

Top 10 David Halberstam Quotes

1. Memory is often less about the truth than about what we want it to be.
2. What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world.
3. I have a great faith in the strength and the resilience in the American people.
4. Nixon, who spent much of his career attacking the press and saying he was a victim of the press, was in fact created by the press, in this case the L.A. Times.
5. With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.
6. The truth posed a great dilemma for a man who always had to be right, and yet, for all his grandeur, was often wrong.
7. There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'
8. The most dangerous thing about power is to employ it where it is not applicable.
9. A staff can be no better than the man it serves.
10. Few sports has as great a disparity between the time committed in practice and time actually spent in game or race conditions.

David Halberstam Short Quotes

• Sometimes the best virtue learned on the battlefield is modesty.
• If there is anything that is important to America, it is that you are not a prisoner of the past.
• Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't want to do it
• Always stay in with the outs.

David Halberstam Famous Quotes And Sayings

Physically, rowing was remarkable resistant to the camera... the camera liked power exhibited more openly, and the power of the oarsmen [is] exhibited in far too controlled a setting. Besides, the camera liked to focus on individuals, and except for the single scull, crew was sport without faces. — David Halberstam

Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefield and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business. — David Halberstam

QUESTION: Do you know what the greatest test is? ANSWER:Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning? — David Halberstam

Rowing, particularly sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time. — David Halberstam

One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be. — David Halberstam

Bart Giamatti did not grow up (as he had dreamed) to play second base for the Red Sox. He became a professor at Yale, and then, in time president of the National Baseball League. He never lost his love for the Boston Red Sox. It was as a Red Sox fan, he later realized that human beings are fallen, and that life is filled with disappointment. The path to comprehending Calvinism in modern America, he decided, begins at Fenway Park. — David Halberstam

This was the mark of an uncommon soldier, someone whose courage away from the battlefield was the same as that on it. — David Halberstam

These days there's all too much coverage of pesudo-events about extraordinarily inauthentic people doing inauthentic things. — David Halberstam

If you're a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring. — David Halberstam

No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did. — David Halberstam

There are only two kinds of stories in the world: those about which I do not care to write as many as 600 words, and those about which I would like to write many more than 600 words. But there is nothing about which I would like to write exactly 600 words. — David Halberstam

In team sports the athletes were bonded by each other, there was an immense peer pressure to keep going. One dared not miss a practice for fear of letting his teammates down. Every time an athlete thought of getting back into bed in the morning he knew he would have to face the anger of his closest friends. But the sculler had to find motivation entirely within himself. No one else cared. — David Halberstam

Life Lessons by David Halberstam

1. David Halberstam's work teaches us the importance of investigative journalism, as he often uncovered stories that were not being told or were being overlooked.
2. He also demonstrated the power of storytelling, as his writing was often able to bring attention to important issues and to inspire people to take action.
3. Finally, Halberstam's work reminds us that the truth is often complex and that it is important to look at all sides of an issue before forming an opinion.