Top 77 Roger Ailes Quotes

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.’

In a capitalistic society, success is determined by whether you can pay the bills.

If people know you’ll go to any lengths for your client, they’re less likely to play games with you.

If somebody comes to me looking for a fight, they might get one.

I never want to get caught with not expecting something.

People who watch news are pretty smart. Most of them don’t just go to one channel for all their news anyway.

I don’t rise to the occasion when there’s no occasion.

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.

I go to mass every Sunday, which is a shock to everybody.

I’ve got a bad leg; I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.

Personally, I’m right of center.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All business is basically about customers and marketing and making money and capitalism and winning and promoting it and having something someone really wants.

I could never be elected.

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.

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.

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.

If we look conservative, it’s because the other guys are so far to the left.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to communist infiltrators.

The press is supposed to watch the powerful. And not throw in with them.

I know there are limits to what a coach can accomplish in improving speechmaking unless the subject is a diligent student of himself.

My first qualification is I didn’t go to Columbia Journalism School.

My doctor told me that I’m old, fat, and ugly, but none of those things is going to kill me immediately.

We’re not programming to conservatives. We’re just not eliminating their point of view.

I was the youngest producer of a national television show when I was twenty-five. I took it to 182 markets. Tremendous success.

Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.

I would like to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’

I’d like to hire Hillary Clinton. She looks unhappy at the State Department. She’d get ratings.

I consider myself a freedom fighter, fighting for my clients.

Do I take alternative points of view? Yes, because all the media are going in another direction.

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.

I don’t tell Rupert Murdoch who to endorse.

I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was.

Wolf Blitzer is an excellent reporter, but he’s not a star.

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.

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.

I quit politics because I hated it.

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.

I happen to think that the Latino audience is an essentially traditional audience and will go to Fox News for traditional American values.

There are more conservatives on Fox. But we are not a conservative network.

I like Bloomberg; he’s a friend.

David Dinkins was a financial disaster personally – and as an administrator. That is what the record shows.

I don’t ignore anything. Somebody gets in my face, I get in their face.

I have a good eye for talent, and my talent performs the best.

I’m a great believer in giving people a chance.

A lot of what we do at Fox is blue-collar stuff.

I want to prove that a fat guy can get to 100 still working.

The contributions being made by Latinos are extraordinary, and we need to talk about them.

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.

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.

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.

Attacking me and Fox News is nothing new – it’s a cottage industry.

I believe most people think the economy is very important.

Television is not a gimmick.

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.

CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad.

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.

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.

Listen, we elected Warren G. Harding. Anybody has a chance.

I’ve been kicked out of every damn church I’ve ever belonged to.

Van Jones has one job: to stir up racism, whether he can find it or not.

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.

A guy who gets fired and humiliated in the press can lose a lot of confidence.

The NBC News people won’t get caught dead on MSNBC.

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.

I can’t look hip, but I don’t want to be hip.

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.

I’ve been an underdog all my life.

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.

I worked three summers putting in sewer pipe and guardrail on the road in Ohio.

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.

I don’t want my son to have to collect a bunch of ‘New York Times’ articles to see what I was like.

If you’re making money, and you’ve hit your targets for five years, you don’t need to demand a new contract.

What I think works for Fox News is we have a very direct form of communication.