“The skillful tactician may be likened to the shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found in the Ch'ang mountains. Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by head and tail both.” 

“Never venture, never win!” 

“If his forces are united, separate them.” 

“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.” 

“It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.” 

“But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.” 

“Be where your enemy is not.” 

“Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will.” 

“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” 

“If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.” 

“Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day.” 

“Disorder came from order, fear came from courage, weakness came from strength.” 

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster” 

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

Don't overstate Fox News. It's still much smaller than the least of the network niches.

What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News that's quite outrageous.

Cable penetrates 70 percent of American audiences now.

Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.

What we have to do is put this in a coherent form for them at the end of the day, and on the big events, give them the kind of context that they deserve.

I think they are paying a lot more attention to news now, by the way, in part because of national-security issues. A lot of young people have friends or family in the military today.

Our obligation at the network is where do we fit into that and how can we best capitalize on that to make sure that our piece of that remains important to those young people.

What I think is that Fox has done a very smart job of carving out their place.

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is high church.

TV is a fickle business. I'm only good for the length of my contract.

Peter, of the three of us, was our prince. He seemed so timeless. He had such elan and style.

While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades... the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships.

Peter will have a place in this brotherhood forever.

Peter is an old friend. I'm heartbroken, but he's also a tough guy. I'm counting on him getting through this very difficult passage.

It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

David Brinkley was an icon of modern broadcast journalism, a brilliant writer who could say in a few words what the country needed to hear during times of crisis, tragedy and triumph.

The response to 'The Greatest Generation' and the books that followed has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.

Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case. I really thought that was outrageous that she was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a strong but thoughtful way.

I had this unusual mix of curiosity, the ability to write in ways people understood, and when I appeared, viewers seemed to trust me to get them through some cataclysmic changes.

I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.

In Los Angeles, I had the good fortune of anchoring the news right before Johnny Carson came on, so to see him, the Hollywood stars watched me first.

I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.

Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

The most memorable interviews for me are folks whose names I don't know: young civil rights leaders in the South, showing great courage as they walked into a town in the dark of night. A doctor working for 'Doctors Without Borders' in Somalia, operating by kerosene light in a tent. Those are the kinds of people that linger in your memory.

The conceit of an anchorman is we never think we're going to die, I suppose.

I don't like to play the macho card, but I grew up in a working-class family and a working-class culture.

In the seasons of life, I have had more than my share of summers.

You convey something that the public either trusts or it does not trust, and it has to do with the content and how you handle the news, but it also just has something to do with your persona.

The real test of an anchor is when there's a very big event. Sept. 11 is the quintessential example of that, and that day it took everything that I knew as an anchor, as a citizen, as a father, as a husband, to get through it.

I had gone to all the big stories of the '80s, which was one of the most fertile times in American journalism, around the world and here as well.

I was at MSNBC; I was constantly saying to them during Bridgegate, 'You've convicted Governor Christie without one iota of fact attaching him to the decision to stall the traffic on the bridge. Why don't we wait until the federal government or the state government... completes its investigation.'

I guess the issue that I have with all the news organizations that have a political MO, if you will, attached to them is that they sometimes jump to conclusions about what this will mean. Get ahead of themselves.

I have no problem whatsoever with a kind of political overview or an ideological overview for any of these outlets as long as it's transparent. We know where Breitbart stands, we know where Fox stands, where MSNBC stands. So, people go in with an understanding of that.

I'm a working journalist. I'm interested in all points of view, and I draw conclusions based on facts, not just on opinions.

There are lots of dimensions to being a cancer patient. The overwhelming one is that it takes over your life.