Top 17 Lester Holt Quotes

At the end of the day, I’m reading the news. I’m not digging ditches. I’m not fighting fires. It’s a long day, and it’s a lot of responsibility, and it can be a little bewildering sometimes with the schedule. But, you know, it’s a job, and they pay me well to do a job.

I never believed the anchorman should be the know-it-all. And I try to communicate that to the audience. While I have some knowledge from my years of experience, what I want to do is walk you through this because we’re all walking through this together.

What I’ve come to know is that in life, it’s not always the questions we ask, but rather our ability to hear the answers that truly enriches our understanding. Never, never stop learning.

You know there’s some great folks, great story telling at ‘Dateline,’ and I’m glad to be a part of it.

I’m a morning person, so rising at 4-something on weekends is not a huge challenge for me. I am not, however, much of a morning eater – not at that hour, at least.

I remember when I interviewed at MSNBC, one of the first things they said to me was, ‘In your tapes, you had a mustache, right?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I recently took it off.’ I said, ‘If you hire me, you get to decide if you want it or not.’ They said, ‘No, no, we’re fine with it now.’

You never know what doors are going to open up and why they are going to open up. You’ve got to be ready to walk through them.

I reluctantly soldiered on to the raccoon. It actually would have tasted quite good had I not had the image of a raccoon rummaging through the garbage stuck in my head.

You can’t exactly do it from your hotel room. It’s the weather; you’ve got to get out in it. You’re telling people that there are 70 mile-per-hour winds. So it’s like, ‘Let’s prove it.’

I have this vision of maybe going the way of Bill Kurtis and, I think, Tom Brokaw, to a certain extent – the ability to not be tied to the desk anymore, but to do projects that are meaningful to you.

For 30 years I’ve been schooled in everything from government, and economics, to medicine and international relations. But don’t be impressed. Someone once said being a general assignment reporter simply means you are equally ignorant about most everything. In other words, I know a little about a lot.

As Americans, we rightfully place tremendous value on having a free and independent press. Our role as journalists is to give voice to the voiceless, and hold our leaders and institutions accountable. But the circle is only completed when that information is consumed by a free-thinking and engaged audience.

Everyone knows I’m black. I am who I am. This is the person that Lester Sr. and June Holt raised, and I make no apology for it. At the same time, I’m never going to pull a race card to get what I want. You can’t have it both ways.

Anybody who was in the military or a military family has a certain sensitivity to the separation. Everyone knows military wives have the hardest jobs. I was born into one. When I think back to those days, I didn’t appreciate it then.

I have a couple of basses in my office. And I try to be courteous of my co-workers, but sometimes I get carried away and I crank up my amp and I rock out. It’s kind of my stress reliever.

As a 13, – 14-year-old kid, I’d sit on my bed with a tape recorder and a newspaper. I would do my own newscast. I would practice my diction.

I’m not terribly athletic. And… there’s a lot of things I’m not good at. And if it makes anybody feel better, I was really a pretty bad math student growing up.