The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. – Carl Bernstein
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. – Carl Bernstein
The lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most peoples lives – has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage. – Carl Bernstein
There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused…. sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging oblivion. – Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), 1889