My mother gave me a push. If I hadn't had her, maybe I wouldn't have had the push. If I hadn't gone to military school, maybe I wouldn't have decided to get with the program. Maybe I'd be running a bulldozer, rather than going on and doing something more.

Sam Donaldson

The questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.

Sam Donaldson

You really get the most out of sweet corn if you pick the corn off the stalk and rush it to a pot of boiling water. The longer you wait, the more sugar you lose. But if you get it in the first half hour, that is the sweetest corn ever.

Sam Donaldson

I was a typical farm boy. I liked the farm. I enjoyed the things that you do on a farm, go down to the drainage ditch and fish, and look at the crawfish and pick a little cotton.

Sam Donaldson

My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school.

Sam Donaldson

But in 1941, on December 8th, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother bought a radio and we listened to the war news. We'd not had a radio up to that time. I was born in 1934, so I was seven years of age.

Sam Donaldson

Well, I was born in El Paso, Texas, it was in the nearest hospital to the family farm.

Sam Donaldson

I wanted to be in this business, and once I got into the business I knew I enjoyed it, and I liked it, and I wanted to continue, but I never had a five year plan.

Sam Donaldson

If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.

Sam Donaldson

I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.

Sam Donaldson

My mother gave me a push. If I hadn't had her, maybe I wouldn't have had the push. If I hadn't gone to military school, maybe I wouldn't have decided to get with the program. Maybe I'd be running a bulldozer, rather than going on and doing something more.

Sam Donaldson

There was a little bit of ham in me. And there's a lot of people say there's a lot of ham in me.

Sam Donaldson

News conferences are the only chance the American public has to see Ronald Reagan use his mind.

Sam Donaldson

The truth is, when I got started in this business, it wasn't because I had a full understanding of the importance of the business, but because I thought it was fun. I found it exciting. It fulfilled me, whatever it was that I was looking for.

Sam Donaldson

Some days the competition would beat me and I'd go home thinking awful thoughts, want to hide under the bed, depressed. But of course, in the news business, when you're working a daily news broadcast, you get your victories and defeats every day.

Sam Donaldson

It wasn't until the late '70s that a lot of people knew me.

Sam Donaldson

It was kind of exciting being on the radio. Not everybody was on the radio.

Sam Donaldson

I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.

Sam Donaldson

I can't tell you what that little ingredient is which makes that first person want to go on and aggressively do more, and the other person be content to not do that. It's a mystery, but it does happen.

Sam Donaldson

But my observation has been, certainly in the news business, you've got to give 110 percent.

Sam Donaldson

But I guess the lesson is this: If you don't have confidence in yourself and think that you are worth hiring, or whatever it is, you can't expect anyone else to.

Sam Donaldson