Your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.
Interpretation
The extent of your audience does not determine the value of your insights.
Edward R. Murrow's quote emphasizes that having a larger platform or audience does not inherently mean that one's ideas or opinions are more insightful or wise. It suggests that true wisdom is independent of how far one's voice can reach and instead resides in the depth and quality of what is being communicated.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of social media, one could use this quote to illustrate the idea that popularity does not equal wisdom.
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.
It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.
I will practice coming back to the present moment...not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past or letting anxieties, fears, or cravings pull me out.
The great paralysis of our heart is unbelief.
I don't care if you're obscene, filthy, horrendous -- as long as you're honest.
I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.
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