160 Quotes by David Halberstam

He saw the pleasure you took from your job every day of his life, and THAT was what he wanted.

Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefiled 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.

There was, I found, always more to learn.

the ability to get on the air, which was crucial to any reporter’s career, grew precisely as the ability to analyze diminished.

he knew, unlike most reporters, how to use pauses and the absence of words as effectively as the words themselves.

One successful writer said he would never be a millionaire because he liked living like one too much.

Gen. Matthew Ridgeway "intended not to impose his will on his men, but to allow the men under him to find something in themselves that would make them more confident, more purposeful fighting men. It was their confidence in themselves that would make them fight well, he believed, not so much their belief in him. His job was to keep them to find that quality in themselves.

he was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance.

He was very good, it turned out, at outlining the flaws in the government as long as someone else was in charge of the government.