Welcome to a collection of insightful and inspiring quotes by Tom Brokaw, a distinguished American journalist and author whose name has become synonymous with integrity and excellence in broadcast journalism. With a career spanning over five decades, Brokaw has left an indelible mark on the media landscape, reporting on some of the most significant events in modern history with depth, clarity, and unwavering commitment to truth.
As the former anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Brokaw became a trusted voice for millions of viewers around the world, guiding them through moments of triumph and tragedy alike. His journalistic acumen, coupled with a profound sense of empathy, has earned him numerous accolades and cemented his legacy as one of the preeminent figures in broadcast journalism.
Barack Obama’s name will be the one on the peace prize, but his speech and his manner could become a gift for generations to come. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away. Tom Brokaw
One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children. Tom Brokaw
I was a young man working in Omaha, Nebraska, in the mid-1960s when I received a call, and I was summoned to Atlanta to work at WSB. It was, for me, the beginning of a real education about the South. Tom Brokaw
I am simply the most conspicuous part of a large, thoroughly dedicated and professional staff that extends from just behind these cameras, across this country and around the world, in too many instances, in places of grave danger and personal hardship. They’re family to me. Tom Brokaw
One of the advantages of being a national journalist of some recognition is that you come across high-profile people, and many become your friends. Tom Brokaw
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.’ Tom Brokaw
People are beginning to doubt the moral certitude of people on the right, especially the far right. Tom Brokaw
I had good care going. I had Meredith and the family. And I didn’t want to become the object of some kind of pity, most of all. I didn’t want to show up on the Internet, ‘Tom Brokaw has cancer.’ Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
It’s all storytelling, you know. That’s what journalism is all about. Tom Brokaw
John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
My mother, who graduated from high school at sixteen, had no hope of affording college, so she went to work in the local post office for a dollar a day. She was doing better than her father, who earned ten cents an hour working at a nearby grain elevator. Tom Brokaw
I had four compression fractures in my spine. They were repaired, but it cost me two inches of height. Tom Brokaw
What I quickly learned after my diagnosis is that the world of a cancer patient has many parts and a good deal of uncertainty. Tom Brokaw
After 50 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, my father died, too young, of a massive heart attack. He was 69. It’s almost certain that all those years of nicotine inhalation were a major contributor to his clogged arteries. Tom Brokaw
I’m a working journalist. I’m interested in all points of view, and I draw conclusions based on facts, not just on opinions. Tom Brokaw
In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up. Set a standard, and stay faithful to it. Tom Brokaw
You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. Tom Brokaw
If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is high church. Tom Brokaw
Cable penetrates 70 percent of American audiences now. Tom Brokaw
Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away. Tom Brokaw
The year of my birth, 1940, was the fulcrum of America in the twentieth century, when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other. Tom Brokaw
You will not get a Google alert when you fall in love. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
In Gerald Ford, the man he was in public, he was also that man in private. Tom Brokaw
In 1989, a lone and still-anonymous Chinese student stood unarmed in front of a Chinese tank and gave the world an enduring image of the determination of China’s young to change their nation. He didn’t text message the tank or share a video on YouTube. Tom Brokaw
We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda’s attacks on America launched the nation into three wars – against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State. Tom Brokaw
I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women’s movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles? Tom Brokaw
My own strong feeling was that the gay liberation movement really got national attraction in the truest sense of the word later in the ’70s, in the ’80s, and especially in the ’90s. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
I’m a guy who’s had great good fortune in his life. And everything has kind of gone in my direction. Tom Brokaw
My hope is that we would begin to have a dialogue in this country about the importance of civility. We can have strong differences, but it does seem to me that most of the country believes it’s gone to critical mass in what I would call the professional class across the political spectrum – left and right. Tom Brokaw
The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything – meals, jobs, clothing. Tom Brokaw
My family is not only attractive – I can say that because I’m paterfamilias – but they’re really smart, and they’re very, very compassionate. Tom Brokaw
We don’t play the celebrity business in our family. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
There are lots of dimensions to being a cancer patient. The overwhelming one is that it takes over your life. Tom Brokaw
You may be guided by the unending effort of poets and artists, biologists and psychiatrists to describe that irreplaceable and still mysterious emotion so essential to the human condition, but all the search engines in the universe cannot compete with the first kiss. Tom Brokaw
What I think is that Fox has done a very smart job of carving out their place. Tom Brokaw
The daunting task of being a mother, a wife, and an independent career or professional person is really taxing. Tom Brokaw
In one way or another, President Obama’s critics will dog him all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and even his admirers will continue to have doubts about his accomplishments if not his promise. Tom Brokaw
I played high school basketball at six feet, then I went to 5-11 in my 50’s, and then, bang, I went down to 5-9. Tom Brokaw
I was a college dropout, hitchhiking across the Midwest. That was part of the old, adventurous spirit. Tom Brokaw
In the seasons of life, I have had more than my share of summers. Tom Brokaw
I think people of my generation became journalists – you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers – because we wanted to report the big stories. Tom Brokaw
Peter will have a place in this brotherhood forever. Tom Brokaw
In 1962, I had an entry-level reporter’s job at an Omaha television station. I had bargained to get a salary of $100 dollars a week because I didn’t feel I could tell Meredith’s doctor father I was making less. Tom Brokaw
When he entered the Oval Office – by fate, not by design – Citizen Ford knew that he was not perfect, just as he knew he was not perfect when he left. But what president ever was? Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
Sometime in the early Seventies, gender-free toys were briefly a popular idea. So at Christmas on the California beach in 1972, we downplayed the dolls with frilly dresses and loaded up Santa’s sack with toy trucks and earth movers for our three daughters. Tom Brokaw
Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years – from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 – women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men. Tom Brokaw
I’ve seen a lot of seasons, change in my time. It’s been a very lucky life. Tom Brokaw
I’m not going to sit on the porch of the old anchorman’s home with a drool cup. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
Peter, of the three of us, was our prince. He seemed so timeless. He had such elan and style. Tom Brokaw
In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early ’60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war. Tom Brokaw
I don’t like to play the macho card, but I grew up in a working-class family and a working-class culture. Tom Brokaw
I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends. Tom Brokaw
1920 was an auspicious year for a young person to enter the world as an American citizen. Tom Brokaw
While Pickstown may not be what it once was, it still is framed by the natural beauty of the ancient river, the sweep of the Great Plains, and the long, unbroken shoreline of the lake behind the dam. It gave me a 19th-century childhood in a modern mid-20th-century town, and for that I will always be grateful. Tom Brokaw
I’ve interviewed presidents and royalty, rock stars and movie stars, famous generals and captains of industry; I’ve had front row seats at Super Bowls, World Series, and Olympic Games; my books have been on best-seller lists, and my marriage is a long-running success. Tom Brokaw
Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high. Tom Brokaw
Most patients enter a doctor’s office or hospital as if it were a Mayan temple, representing an ancient and mysterious culture with no language in common with the visitor. Tom Brokaw
ABC wouldn’t be a player in the news major leagues until the 1970s, when Roone Arledge brought to ABC News the energy and programming approach he had applied to ABC Sports. Tom Brokaw
When I read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ I was so struck by the universality of small towns. Tom Brokaw
The disquieting news of Danny Villanueva’s death brought back memories of our time together at KNBC in the early 1970s. Tom Brokaw
I believe you make your own luck. My motto is ‘It’s always a mistake not to go.’ Tom Brokaw
There is certainly greatness in the ’60s generation. They changed our attitudes about race in America, which was long overdue. They didn’t just stand up and salute when told to go to war. Women finally began to realize a more equal place in our society. Tom Brokaw
I’ve lost seven friends to smoking-related lung cancer. Each death was a long, agonizing experience. Tom Brokaw
As young parents of three girls, living in California during the late Sixties and early Seventies, Meredith and I couldn’t help but be aware of the rising level of dialogue, debate, commentary, and proclamations about the place of women in society and about how to raise females in light of this raised consciousness. Tom Brokaw
I had fractures in my spine that had to be repaired that came as a big surprise; nobody warned me that I might get some really severe, threatening fractures. It was painful, and I lost two inches of height, bang! Tom Brokaw
When you walk into a doctor’s office, you’ve got to have the same attitude you would about anything else. You’ve got to ask tough questions, and you’ve got to not be afraid to challenge their credentials. Tom Brokaw
I’m in remission. I need to get my physical conditioning to a higher level. I was always very fit. I need to get back to where I am very confident in my ability to bike a long way. Tom Brokaw
The cancer is in remission, and I will shortly go on a drug maintenance regimen to keep it there. Tom Brokaw
I was still in college when ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ came out in 1960. I remember it had a kind of an electrifying effect on this country; this was a time when there were a lot of good books coming out. Tom Brokaw
The response to ‘The Greatest Generation’ and the books that followed has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. Tom Brokaw
I’ve been lucky from my earliest memory on. I happened to be born to the right parents, and the lives we led – working class, migratory – suited my personality. I had an adventurous mindset, and we lived on an Army base, then in South Dakota – it was a dynamic environment. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
Because I lived in construction towns, we had a lot of workers who came from the South. They were all white, and, sorry to say, a number of them were pretty redneck. Tom Brokaw
Originally, the main purpose of the convention was to determine who the party would have as the presidential nominee and the vice-presidential nominee. Tom Brokaw
I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
I’m the father of three daughters, and they’re all highly trained professionals. Two of them are mothers, and the other one wants to be at some point. Tom Brokaw
Watergate was a constitutional crisis of the highest order. Tom Brokaw
Oklahoma residents are known for not backing down from a fight in the political arena, on the gridiron, NBA courts or rodeo arenas, but in their reaction to the bombing, they knew intuitively they would not find restoration in rage. Tom Brokaw
Everywhere I go – from Main Street to Wall Street – people ask, ‘What’s happened to our political system? Why can’t Washington folks work together?’ Tom Brokaw
While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades… the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
We were empty nesters, our last-born child having departed for Duke. Meredith decided we needed a dog to fill the vacuum. She heard about a litter in Colorado sired by Chopper, the legendary avalanche dog at the top of Aspen Mountain. Tom Brokaw
TV is a fickle business. I’m only good for the length of my contract. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
In our family, where we began with no money, we like to say that we have discovered that God invented money so those who have it can help others. Tom Brokaw
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. Tom Brokaw
I was on the board of the Mayo Clinic. I was diagnosed there, and I could pick up the phone and get a hold of whoever I wanted to. What I learned is that you really have to get proactive and manage your case. Tom Brokaw
We lost our way and allowed greed and excess to become the twin pillars of too much of the financial culture. We became a society utterly absorbed in consumption and dismissive of moderation. Tom Brokaw