Explore Quotes by 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.

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.

In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

Originally, the main purpose of the convention was to determine who the party would have as the presidential nominee and the vice-presidential nominee.

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.

We don't play the celebrity business in our family.

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.

My mentor in the transition from the old Gabriel Heatter and John Cameron Swayze way of doing things was David Brinkley. He brought an entirely different style to what we were doing.

Cancer has given me a dose of humility. I'm much more empathetic. It's a club I would rather not have joined, but it is a club.

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.'

I'm a guy who's had great good fortune in his life. And everything has kind of gone in my direction.

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.

There are lots of dimensions to being a cancer patient. The overwhelming one is that it takes over your life.

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.'

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.

In the seasons of life, I have had more than my share of summers.

The conceit of an anchorman is we never think we're going to die, I suppose.

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.

I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.

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.

What I think is that Fox has done a very smart job of carving out their place.