Dan Rather

“Are the Democrats going to dance the mandate Macarena?”

“Always marry a woman from Texas. No matter how tough things get, she's seen tougher.”

“As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.”

“Start-ups like UniversityNow, a network of low-cost, online colleges, allows students to work at their own pace and pay a few hundred dollars a month for a degree.”

“But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.”

“A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.”

“Once the herd starts moving in one direction, it's very hard to turn it, even slightly.”

“From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.”

“Ratings don't last. Good journalism does.”

“Never eat spinach just before going on the air.”

“The press is a watchdog. Not an attack dog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can't be right all the time. He doesn't bark only when he sees or smells something that's dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.”

“The great lesson my mother and father gave me was almost invisible. It was a strong sense of being rooted.”

“Well, first of all, I don't want to debate the word conservative, but by my definition, a conservative is someone who wants to conserve the Constitution of the United States and the American tradition and law that no one is above the law.”

“I had just turned 10-years-old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War II.”

“I'd much rather wear out than rust out.”

“What I say or do here won't matter much, nor should it.”

“Only votes talk, everything else walks.”

“Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.”

“As long as I have my health, I want to be reporting somewhere.”

“And now the sequence of events in no particular order.”