“I’ve never wanted my kid faced with the idea of, ‘Who’s the fat guy sitting in the living room? What the hell is he doing?’ I figure I might as well go to work so he can say his dad works.”
― Roger Ailes
“Everybody fears the unknown. But I have a strong feeling there’s something bigger than us. I don’t think all this exists because some rocks happened to collide. I’m at peace. When it comes, I’ll be fine, calm. I’ll miss life, though. Especially my family.”
― Roger Ailes
“Audiences are shifting. Platforms are shifting. Ages are shifting. It’s better to be in charge of change than to have to react to change.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t ignore anything. Somebody gets in my face, I get in their face.”
― Roger Ailes
“I worked three summers putting in sewer pipe and guardrail on the road in Ohio.”
― Roger Ailes
“We didn’t have locks in the early 1940s because nobody got into anybody’s house, and nobody did anything wrong.”
― Roger Ailes
“Fox News has a very-high-income audience, and I think that any business channel automatically draws that. We’re not gonna reach for a lower financial demographic.”
― Roger Ailes
“We’re not programming to conservatives. We’re just not eliminating their point of view.”
― Roger Ailes
“Anybody who knows me knows that half the time I’m saying things with a somewhat humorous overtone.”
― Roger Ailes
“There are always people that will rise to the occasion when there is no occasion, but it is hard to find people will do it when there is.”
― Roger Ailes
“The difference between pros and amateurs is that pros play hurt.”
― Roger Ailes
“My doctor told me that I’m old, fat, and ugly, but none of those things is going to kill me immediately.”
― Roger Ailes
“Twitter is a wonderful device. And I call it a device, but there are people that are addicted to it now. That’s not good. You’re really not very interesting using only so many letters.”
― Roger Ailes
“If people know you’ll go to any lengths for your client, they’re less likely to play games with you.”
― Roger Ailes
“There is a – deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me.”
― Roger Ailes
“I can’t stand cruel people. And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else just to make themselves feel important, it really gets me mad.”
― Roger Ailes
“I look for something unique, and I look for people who haven’t reached their potential. I think I’m pretty good at developing talent.”
― Roger Ailes
“A lot of what we do at Fox is blue-collar stuff.”
― Roger Ailes
“I believe business news is general news.”
― Roger Ailes
“Listen, we elected Warren G. Harding. Anybody has a chance.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’ve been an underdog all my life.”
― Roger Ailes
“If you’re making money, and you’ve hit your targets for five years, you don’t need to demand a new contract.”
― Roger Ailes
“I love pressure situations. I won’t run for cover, and I’ll try to take as much of the heat as possible. Because I feel I can stand it better than most people.”
― Roger Ailes
“In most news, if you hear a conservative point of view, that’s called bias. We believe if you eliminate such a viewpoint, that’s bias.”
― Roger Ailes
“I happen to think that the Latino audience is an essentially traditional audience and will go to Fox News for traditional American values.”
― Roger Ailes
“I have a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t care about my legacy. It’s too late. My enemies will create it, and they’ll push it.”
― Roger Ailes
“Nobody wants to be in a position of defending anything Fox might do for minorities.”
― Roger Ailes
“Money will find you if people believe in your message.”
― Roger Ailes
“David Dinkins was a financial disaster personally – and as an administrator. That is what the record shows.”
― Roger Ailes
“I view myself more as a traditionalist than a conservative. But I like the traditions, so I tend to try to keep them alive. But I’m open to any kind of political thought – I don’t care – I have people that I don’t agree with, and I have good friends I don’t agree with, but for me personally, I’m more comfortable with the traditional stuff.”
― Roger Ailes
“CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t have any focus groups on talent and programming. If I need five people in a mall to be paid $40 to tell me how to do my job, I shouldn’t do my job.”
― Roger Ailes
“You never pull the trigger until you know you can win.”
― Roger Ailes
“I quit politics because I hated it.”
― Roger Ailes
“I only understand friendship or scorched earth.”
― Roger Ailes
“Television and I grew up together.”
― Roger Ailes
“Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time.”
― Roger Ailes
“CNN and MSNBC, our primary competitors, are trying to figure out how to beat us. There are some good, smart people at those networks, and even occasionally a blind pig finds an acorn.”
― Roger Ailes
“If somebody wants to book Alec Baldwin on one of our shows, and he wants to come on and talk to our people and say what he wants, I don’t care. We would question him on his choice of words.”
― Roger Ailes
“I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was.”
― Roger Ailes
“Tell me who you want to see on the Left, and I’ll hire them. If you give me a big name that’s out there, that’s floating around and wants work, I’d be happy to hire them.”
― Roger Ailes
“I think almost everything in life is life-experience, personality-driven.”
― Roger Ailes
“Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country – my dad was a factory guy – I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don’t mind if people want to argue with that, or think that’s crazy.”
― Roger Ailes
“It would be a lie to say that I don’t care what people say about me. Every human being cares unless they’re nuts. Am I nuts? But you can’t allow that to override your mission.”
― Roger Ailes
“You cannot allow whether someone likes you or not to alter your course of action. Sometimes I think, ‘Sure, that hurts my feelings.’ But it’s not so important that I will adjust what I’m doing because someone is not going to like me.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’m not trying to be anyone. You know why other executives always hire phonies? Because they’re phonies. They hire phonies because they like phonies. They’re comfortable with them.”
― Roger Ailes
“The press is supposed to watch the powerful. And not throw in with them.”
― Roger Ailes
“Who’s like Bill O’Reilly? If there was somebody like Bill O’Reilly, they’d be out there getting ratings. No matter how much the mainstream press dumps on him, the guy constantly delivers an interesting show. He’s unique.”
― Roger Ailes
“I believe most people think the economy is very important.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’ve been kicked out of every damn church I’ve ever belonged to.”
― Roger Ailes
“I could never be elected.”
― Roger Ailes
“I want clean water and clean air and conservation… that’s not what extreme environmentalists are all about. For them, it is a religion. They believe in trees and animals, not God.”
― Roger Ailes
“Usually, there are three or four major news spikes per year.”
― Roger Ailes
“All business is basically about customers and marketing and making money and capitalism and winning and promoting it and having something someone really wants.”
― Roger Ailes
“The news business is simple, but it’s not easy to do well.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’ve been thanked a lot in Wendy’s, Applebee’s, and Marriot hotels, I’ve never been thanked in Le Cirque, for some reason. I try to spend as little time as possible in Le Cirque; that’s not because the food isn’t good… I’m not the kind of guy who likes to find his food under his parsley.”
― Roger Ailes
“Van Jones has one job: to stir up racism, whether he can find it or not.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t pay a lot of attention to communist infiltrators.”
― Roger Ailes
“Do I take alternative points of view? Yes, because all the media are going in another direction.”
― Roger Ailes
“When the press falls in love, they fall in love hard.”
― Roger Ailes
“A guy who gets fired and humiliated in the press can lose a lot of confidence.”
― Roger Ailes
“If you’ve got a big star like O’Reilly, it does overshadow what the hard-news guys do during the day. That’s the nature of television.”
― Roger Ailes
“The contributions being made by Latinos are extraordinary, and we need to talk about them.”
― Roger Ailes
“My toughest job every day is maintaining intensity with myself and with my staff.”
― Roger Ailes
“I like Bloomberg; he’s a friend.”
― Roger Ailes
“I like Marco Rubio. But I don’t know about as a vice-presidential candidate. He’s a nice guy, and that role requires kicking the crap out of your opponents.”
― Roger Ailes
“CNBC was completely in the dumper when I went there.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’m constantly trying to invent different ways to do things. If you’re going to be a television executive, you have to change with the times.”
― Roger Ailes
“I didn’t give up my citizenship to create and run a news organization.”
― Roger Ailes
“I want to prove that a fat guy can get to 100 still working.”
― Roger Ailes
“I would like to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’”
― Roger Ailes
“There is a tendency in the media to simplify me to the point that I am somehow a tough guy. I think there is a lot more to me.”
― Roger Ailes
“In a capitalistic society, success is determined by whether you can pay the bills.”
― Roger Ailes
“Television is not a gimmick.”
― Roger Ailes
“People who watch news are pretty smart. Most of them don’t just go to one channel for all their news anyway.”
― Roger Ailes
“I like talent. I respect talent. I teach talent.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t tell Rupert Murdoch who to endorse.”
― Roger Ailes
“My first qualification is I didn’t go to Columbia Journalism School.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’ve got a bad leg; I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’d like to hire Hillary Clinton. She looks unhappy at the State Department. She’d get ratings.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t remember threatening anybody, ever. I don’t like threats. I don’t respond well to them, so I don’t give them. But I’m not a doormat. I try to meet the appropriate level of communications.”
― Roger Ailes
“If somebody comes to me looking for a fight, they might get one.”
― Roger Ailes
“What I think works for Fox News is we have a very direct form of communication.”
― Roger Ailes
“When I was in politics, I always got accused of image-making and trying to make them something they weren’t. Truth was – and nobody ever discovered it, although I was in that business for twenty years – what I was trying to do was to get them to be themselves.”
― Roger Ailes
“I think liberals have a lot of good ideas, actually. But I’ve been pigeonholed, and I’m quite comfortable with it.”
― Roger Ailes
“If you’re in the Senate and in the minority, you just get to give speeches and run around and raise money. If you’re in the majority, you’re under attack from the press every day.”
― Roger Ailes
“My job is to cover the news and do it accurately and fair. And we do.”
― Roger Ailes
“We’re Americans. It’s a culture. We should defend that culture, and we should reinforce that culture.”
― Roger Ailes
“I have a good eye for talent, and my talent performs the best.”
― Roger Ailes
“I go to mass every Sunday, which is a shock to everybody.”
― Roger Ailes
“I can’t look hip, but I don’t want to be hip.”
― Roger Ailes
“I was the youngest producer of a national television show when I was twenty-five. I took it to 182 markets. Tremendous success.”
― Roger Ailes
“Fox News Latino has a mission to point out the positives of the Latino population, operating within the framework of making America great.”
― Roger Ailes
“Hispanics who get on government programs are doing only a little better than they were in the old country.”
― Roger Ailes
“Fox News Latino will show people how opportunities exist, that whenever we are overregulated, or there is too much government, we lose freedom. We lose power. That is, historically, one hundred percent true.”
― Roger Ailes
“Attacking me and Fox News is nothing new – it’s a cottage industry.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t want my son to have to collect a bunch of ‘New York Times’ articles to see what I was like.”
― Roger Ailes
“I did what I did. I went against the grain. And I understand that I would be criticized. Those were all choices.”
― Roger Ailes
“I never want to get caught with not expecting something.”
― Roger Ailes
“I think that ‘Fox & Friends’ audience is going to increase. That franchise in the morning is very important to any television operation because they make money.”
― Roger Ailes
“I never want to lose. I hate to lose… But Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times. You can’t hit the home run every time you come up to bat.”
― Roger Ailes
“I consider myself a freedom fighter, fighting for my clients.”
― Roger Ailes
“The NBC News people won’t get caught dead on MSNBC.”
― Roger Ailes
“Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.”
― Roger Ailes
“The reality is, to watch Jon Stewart, you already have to have watched the news. In other words, it’s not funny if he does a joke about John McCain and they don’t know who John McCain is.”
― Roger Ailes
“Yes, people will pay for the Fox News Channel, despite the fact that the general feeling, one created by the Internet, is that everything should be free.”
― Roger Ailes
“If we look conservative, it’s because the other guys are so far to the left.”
― Roger Ailes
“There are more conservatives on Fox. But we are not a conservative network.”
― Roger Ailes
“Personally, I’m right of center.”
― Roger Ailes
“Joe McGinniss will be remembered as a talented man. He changed political writing forever in 1968. We differed on many things, but he had a good heart.”
― Roger Ailes
“We’re losing our freedom of speech. We are losing freedom of religion. We are losing freedom of the press.”
― Roger Ailes
“I was in the Oval Office when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon because I was called in to coordinate the coverage. I got to thinking, ‘We have a feed from the moon. We’ve got a feed from the Earth. I can set up the first interplanetary shot in history.’”
― Roger Ailes
“You just don’t go out when you’re over 55 years of age, have a colossal failure, and expect to find work in your field again.”
― Roger Ailes
“I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”
― Roger Ailes
“I don’t rise to the occasion when there’s no occasion.”
― Roger Ailes
“Wolf Blitzer is an excellent reporter, but he’s not a star.”
― Roger Ailes
“I’m a great believer in giving people a chance.”
― Roger Ailes
“’Vanity Fair’ is a left-wing rag.”
― Roger Ailes
“I know there are limits to what a coach can accomplish in improving speechmaking unless the subject is a diligent student of himself.”
― Roger Ailes
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