“I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.”
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
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Edward R. Murrow 67
Television journalist 1908–1965Related quotes

Speech in Boston http://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=80 (11 October 1858).
1850s

“Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 261

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

“When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.”
"On The Spirit of Controversy," The Atlas (30 January 1830), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)

Fern Britton Meets John Barrowman BBC (2012)