01c. 1970 ADFresh from the rarefied environments of Harvard, the author says he purposefully took journalism jobs in small southern towns so that he could learn the art of conversation with ordinary people. Is this gift for listening and for conversation, it seems, that allowed him to produce textured historical narratives of grand impact.David Halberstam / quote ↗
02c. 1970 ADThe Patriots had picked Brady in the sixth round, and he soon turned out to be one of the two or three best quarterbacks in the League, and absolutely perfect for the Belichick system and for the team's offense. So, as the team continued to make a series of very good calls on other player personnel choices, there was a general tendency to talk about how brilliant Pioli and Belichick were, and to regard Pioli as the best young player personnel man in the League. Just to remind himself not to believe all the hype and that he could readily have screwed up on that draft, Pioli kept on his desk a photo of Brady, along with a photo of the team's fifth-round traft choice, the man he had taken ahead of Brady: Dave Stachelski. He was a Tight End from Boise State who never a played a down for New England. Stachelski was taken with the 141st pick, Brady with the 199th one. 'If I was so smart,' Pioli liked to say, 'I wouldn't have risked an entire round of the draft in picking Brady.David Halberstam / quote ↗
03c. 1970 ADShe was young and scared, and hadn't realized there was time to spare.David Halberstam / quote ↗
04c. 1970 ADThe closer journalists came to great issues, the more vulnerable they felt.David Halberstam / quote ↗
05c. 1970 ADHe was "more passionate than most intelligent men, and more intelligent and reasoned than most passionate men.David Halberstam / quote ↗
06c. 1970 ADIf the Times gave readers far more news, then Lippmann at the Trib made the world seem far more understandable.David Halberstam / quote ↗
07c. 1970 AD(I. F. Stone had once called it an exciting paper to read because you never knew on what page you would find a page-one story),David Halberstam / quote ↗
08c. 1970 ADEveryone else was trying to make things more complicated and Cronkite, typically, was trying to make them more simple.David Halberstam / quote ↗
10c. 1970 ADThe author writes that the central conflict within journalist and seller of the American way Henry Luce was between his curiosity and his certitude.David Halberstam / quote ↗
11c. 1970 ADhe knew, unlike most reporters, how to use pauses and the absence of words as effectively as the words themselves.David Halberstam / quote ↗
12c. 1970 ADhe was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance.David Halberstam / quote ↗
13c. 1970 ADYoung man, Mr. Aubrey has made us so rich that we can now afford to worry about our image.David Halberstam / quote ↗
14c. 1970 ADHe seemed touched by a larger spirit, his course guided by something beyond him, so talented, so able, so good-natured that he did not even inspire envy in a city rich with envy.David Halberstam / quote ↗
15c. 1970 ADDiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams.David Halberstam / quote ↗
16c. 1970 ADThere is no small irony here: An administration which flaunted its intellectual superiority and its superior academic credentials made the most critical of decisions with virtually no input from anyone who had any expertise on the recent history of that part of the world, and it in no way factored in the entire experience of the French Indochina War. Part of the reason for this were the upheavals of the McCarthy period, but in part it was also the arrogance of men of the Atlantic; it was as if these men did not need to know about such a distant and somewhat less worthy part of the world. Lesser parts of the world attracted lesser men; years later I came upon a story which illustrated this theory perfectly. Jack Langguth, a writer and college classmate of mine, mentioned to a member of that Administration that he was thinking of going on to study Latin American history. The man had turned to him, his contempt barely concealed, and said, “Second-rate parts of the world for second-rate minds.David Halberstam / quote ↗
17c. 1970 ADThis was the mark of an uncommon soldier, someone whose courage away from the battlefield was the same as that on it.David Halberstam / quote ↗
18c. 1970 ADIt was the responsibility of a senior fireman to teach as well as to do.David Halberstam / quote ↗
19c. 1970 ADIn the old days, it had been talent and style and brilliance and now it was more and more productivity.David Halberstam / quote ↗
20c. 1970 ADHe was perceived to be intellectually promiscuous, a little too eager to please all groups.David Halberstam / quote ↗
21c. 1970 ADEven in a hostile press conference with hostile questions there was drama, and he could benefit from the drama and the hostility. He mastered the greatest art of television, appearing to be spontaneous without in fact being spontaneous.David Halberstam / quote ↗
22c. 1970 ADMohr was one of the most talented people on the staff of Time, in print as well as in person—the two are often different.David Halberstam / quote ↗
23c. 1970 ADHe could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.David Halberstam / quote ↗
24c. 1970 ADThe faster the motion, the less time to think. Fuselage journalism, Hugh Sidey of Time later called it.David Halberstam / quote ↗