Bert Quint

"This is Marlboro country, southeastern Poland, a place where the transition from communism to capitalism is making more people more miserable every day....No lines at the shops now, but plenty at some of the first unemployment centers in a part of the world where socialism used to guarantee everybody a job."

Mike Lee

"These refugees have been told little about the realities of life in the West, including the fact that some people sleep on the street...They will soon learn that jobs are hard to find, consumer goods expensive, relatives in Albania will be missed. Many refugees, according to experts, will suffer from depression, and in some cases, drug abuse."

Robert Rankin

"[C]ountless liberal analysts over the last five years have documented time and again how Reaganomics delivered a feast to the greedheads and starvation to the poor....[The Gilded Age and The Roaring Twenties] were marked by the same kinds of excesses as the 1980s -- gross concentrations of wealth in the hands of a tiny privileged elite, achieved primarily by deliberate Republican policies that left most Americans behind while debt, greed, and conspicuous consumption soared out of control."

Charles Stein

"The tax package hammered out last weekend continues a Washington policy established in the Reagan era: It takes a heavy bite out of the paychecks of working-class Americans."

Judy Mann

"We have allowed this country to be held hostage by an industry that produces a product vital to our national interests. This makes about as much sense as having the military services or the nation's water supply controlled by private corporations....In the long run, what would make the most sense would be to nationalize the oil industry to protect the economy."

Desson Howe

"If you're miffed because the Cold War's over, Ceaucescu's dead, the Sandinistas lost the election in Nicaragua and it seems like here's no one around to hate any more, then maybe The Hunt for Red October is just the thing....This is a Reagan youth's wet dream of underwater ballistics and East-West conflict."

Juan Williams

"What Helms has done is taken the words 'North Carolina values' -- a beautiful phrase that evokes the small-town, good-hearted sense of place that one feels when one travels the state -- and redefined them as the values belonging to a certain group of North Carolinians, mostly white, mostly male, mostly unhappy with the changes of the last 30 years. To Helms and his supporters, 'North Carolina values' seems to translate into a status quo view of the world in which blacks, women, and poor people know their stations in society."

Mark Phillips

"If nothing is done to reverse ozone damage, scientists predict hundreds of millions of skin cancer cases in the U.S. alone, not to mention increased global warming that would turn much of the planet into a desert."

Charles Kuralt

"Clean air and water, pure food and natural beauty, which most Californians were all for a few months ago, have been made to seem a radical and expensive idea that has to be rejected at the polls on Tuesday. The stakes are very high in California because environmentalists know that if the Big Green initiative happens to pass there, the idea of cleaning up the air and water could spread like wildfire to all the other states. The forces opposing it know that too."

Harry Smith

"We would like to believe the State of the Union address is a time when the President tells the American people the way it is. But no one really wants to hear that, so the President keeps reality down to a minimum. The President was remarkably upbeat for a man who runs a country with a monstrous national debt, huge balance of trade problems, a crumbling infrastructure, dirty air, countless homeless people, a coast-to-coast drug epidemic, and a faltering self-image."

Bob Squier, Bryant Gumbel, and Roger Ailes

Bob Squier, Democratic Strategist: "I think that it was a game of chicken. I think what you had was Gingrich, who is supposed to be part of the leadership, leading people literally out of the deal."
Bryant Gumbel: "Acting irresponsibly."
Gumbel: "....Is this the legacy of Ronald Reagan politics, I mean, feel-good politics of the '80s, no-responsibility politics of the '80s?"
Roger Ailes, Republican Strategist: "I think that's a misnomer..."
Gumbel: "But weren't the '80s about spending what we didn't have? And that was Ronald Reagan."

Dianne Dumanoski

"There is no such thing as objective reporting...I've become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That's my subversive mission."

Cinematographer Almendros

"After seeing our footage, she told us that Frontline doesn't co-produce anti-communist programs."

Ted Turner

"Gorbachev has probably moved more quickly than any person in the history of the world. Moving faster than Jesus Christ did. America is always lagging six months behind...I think we can get by easily with a $75 billion military budget. Those bombers and all of this stuff is an absolute waste of money and a joke."

Dan Rather

"He has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes...There's a kind of laser-beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It's the look of a kind of human volcano, or he'd probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant."

Tony Mauro

"Supreme Court nominee David Souter wants the world to stop viewing him as a nerd. Senate Democrats want to know if, instead, Souter is a neanderthal -- a mean-spirited conservative bent on wrecking constitutional protections for women, minorities, and accused criminals."

Dan Rather

"Senator Simon, is there any doubt in your mind that [Souter's] views pretty well parallel those of John Sununu's which means he's anti-abortion or anti-women's rights, whichever way you want to put it?"

John Chancellor

"The overall tax burden for Americans, local, state and federal, is actually quite low....The fact is Americans could pay more taxes and the country wouldn't go down the tube. Taxpayers don't believe this because they are being conned by the politicians....The truth is that the United States needs higher taxes and can afford them. Some political leaders are now starting to say that, but until more say it, the country will remain in trouble."

Bryant Gumbel

"[Except] for capital gains, it is certain the President won't mention the T word, and yet taxes are very much at the heart of what all our potential solutions are. How long can both sides pretend that a hike's not needed?"

Deborah Norville

"Ortega's defeat is something American Presidents had sought for ten years. Yet Ortega's statesman-like acceptance of the voters' decision has prompted some in Washington to call the Sandinista leader a champion of democracy."

Barbara Reynolds

"Mandela leaves as a principled man, with all but the dullards understanding why he would embrace the Palestinians, whose children are being killed and family homes bulldozed in Israel just as black families' are in Soweto....Moreover, if Mandela is a terrorist -- as conservatives have called him -- he would fit right in with U.S. patriots such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, Nat Turner, and Harriet Tubman. If it had not been for those terrorists, what would we have to wave our flags about on the Fourth of July?"

Jodie Allen

"The problem for Florio is that, as history has shown, when you step up and are a leader, people often don't like you. And it can take a long time, even centuries, for history to look back and say that was a good guy....I think that Florio will go down as the first, I hope not the last, brave man of the '80s and '90s."

Bruce Morton

"[Justice William Brennan] loved the flag clearly, and the Constitution, too...Maybe the way to remember Brennan's years on the Court is with some words he spoke to another Georgetown University event back in 1979. 'The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end,' he said. The quest, though always old, is never old, like the poor old woman in Yeats' play. 'Did you see an old woman going down the path?' asked Bridget. 'I did not,' replied Patrick, who had come into the house just after the old woman had left it. 'But I saw a young girl and she had the walk of a queen.' William Brennan loved and served two young girls who walked like queens -- his country, and its highest court."

Ed Rabel

"Polls won't close here for another thirty minutes, but the widespread belief that the Sandinistas will prevail has shifted thinking far beyond the ballot box. The topic of the day is: how will a freely elected Sandinista government be treated by the United States?"

Peter Jennings

"For the Bush Administration and the Reagan Administration before it, the [ABC News-Washington Post] poll hints at a simple truth: after years of trying to get rid of the Sandinistas, there is not much to show for their efforts."

Sarah McClendon

"It will take 100 years to get the government back into place after Reagan. He hurt people: the disabled, women, nursing mothers, the homeless."

Eleanor Clift

"Okay, Democrats are certainly not without blame. But I believe the S&L crisis lands right at the Republican door. It was the magic of the marketplace that took off the regulations...Oh, Ronald Reagan and the magic of the marketplace was the theme of the '80s. Greed in this country is associated with Ronald Reagan."

David Martin

"When inflation is taken into account, it adds up to a cut in defense spending, and that's the first time in a long time that has happened." -- Bob Schieffer on the January 27 CBS Evening News. vs. "It's easily overlooked, but the fact is, that in real terms, the defense budget has been going down every year since 1985."

Ed Rabel

"But they [young people] are the healthiest and most educated young people in Cuba's history. For that many of them say they have Castro and his socialist revolution to thank....if they long for the sweeping changes occurring in Eastern Europe, they are not saying so publicly....To the extent he can, Castro has been rewarding young people. For example, on their return home [from Angola], the 300,000 Cubans sent to Africa were first in line for housing, jobs, and education. Such benevolence breeds dedication, some young people say."

John Dancy

"But Ortega, an irritant to Carter, became an obsession to Reagan, who saw him as an instrument of Moscow. The Contra rebels were the blunt instrument in Ronald Reagan's attack on Daniel Ortega. Reagan's dogged support for the Contras forever marked and ultimately scarred his foreign policy....Many of the Contras were former members of the Nicaraguan National Guard, Somoza's enforcers. They were brutal, often inept...It has been one of the longest and most traumatic chapters in U.S. history in Latin America, and tonight it seems to be ending, and ending in a way Ronald Reagan never could have imagined."

Al Neuharth

"Free at last, the temptation is to exercise all that freedom -- fully, quickly and sometimes unwisely. Often, it means biting the hand that freed and fed you. Lithuania is the latest and most ludicrous example....There is little more logic to Lithuania being permitted to unilaterally and unlawfully declare its independence from the USSR than there would be for Texas to secede from the USA. Both were grabbed during a war. But both owe much to their modern-day mother country. Gorby has a right to feel livid about Lithuania. The way you might feel about a runaway child, tempted to beat him within an inch of his life."

Mike Wallace

"Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin."

NAME

"Attempting to defect will no longer be a severely punishable offense, but will be known as 'border trespass,' subject only to a minor penalty. And the death penalty, now applied to 34 offenses, will be retained only for those that involve direct 'betrayal' of the communist state and the social order."

vs.

Peter Jennings

"A reminder from Eastern Europe today that not all has changed. In Albania today, border guards shot and killed a four-year-old girl when they opened fire on a group of Albanians trying to cross into Yugoslavia. Albania is the last of the totalitarian states in Eastern Europe."

Christian Williams

"The reporters (at Capital News) work for a shining institution, basically the last uncorrupted institution you can find. Hospitals are corrupt. Judges are corrupt. Everybody in the world is corrupt. But our newspapers are essentially a monument to idealism."

Ray Brady

"It used to be that the United States was number one, dominant....So right now, we are fast losing our position as number one, Connie....Yes, we're no longer dominant, we're no longer the number one nation, Connie...so we are no longer that number one, dominant nation. That's the big change here now."

George McGovern

"I wish I'd done this before I'd run for President. It would've given me insight into the anxiety any independent businessman or farmer must have....Now I've had to meet a payroll every week. I've got to pay the bank every month....I've got to pay the state of Connecticut taxes....It gives you a whole new perspective on what other people worry about."

Bob Simon

"Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany's eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some subsidies, or the whole East German system, which covered everyone in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall."

Deborah Norville

"Modern man has reached the point where his demands for space are ravaging the planet, and wiping out other life forms in the process. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich is back with more of his series 'Assignment Earth,' and this morning he begins with a report on how man is destroying the entire ecological system with something that appears to be completely harmless."