The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
Interpretation
Understanding complex ideas often takes time, while obvious truths can be overlooked.
This quote by Edward R. Murrow suggests that often the truly profound insights are not immediately apparent, requiring careful thought and reflection to grasp. In contrast, while some truths may seem obvious, recognizing and acknowledging them can sometimes take much longer, indicating a deeper layer of understanding that isn't readily accepted.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about the journey of learning.
We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles.
Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.
I think that much of the advice given to young men about saving money is wrong. I never saved a cent until I was forty years old. I invested in myself - in study, in mastering my tools, in preparation. Many a man who is putting a few dollars a week into the bank would do much better to put it into himself.
Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and no evil can destroy.
The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.
The most exhausting thing you can do is to be inauthentic.
I have found that nothing so deceives your adversaries as telling them the truth.
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