Wit & Attitude Quote by Sam Donaldson

A military school lesson, delivered in the blunt grammar of command: freedom is fine, but not if it makes you a problem for the unit. Donaldson’s phrasing is tellingly unapologetic. “You can’t just do anything you damn well please” doesn’t dress itself up as civic virtue; it’s the language of constraint, of consequence, of an institution that turns individuality into something to be managed. For a journalist who made his name inside the machinery of national politics, that origin story isn’t incidental. It frames his later worldview as pragmatic rather than romantic: society runs on rules enforced by social pressure, not personal preference.

The second sentence sharpens the edge. “Much better to be with the winners” sounds like advice you’d hear in a locker room or a campaign war room, and that’s the subtext: politics and public life are competitive sports with scoreboards, not morality plays. It’s also a small confession about proximity to power. Reporters are trained to keep distance, yet their access and relevance often track the gravitational pull of “winners” - elected officials, rising candidates, administrations in control. Donaldson, a Watergate-era creature of television’s adversarial age, knew how status works in Washington: you don’t just cover the story, you position yourself near the people who get to decide what the story is.

There’s an unease tucked inside the certainty. “Winners” and “losers” is a binary that flattens ethics into outcomes. As a lesson, it’s efficient; as a civic philosophy, it’s dangerous. That tension is the point: Donaldson is naming the social bargain most people pretend isn’t there.