Wit & Attitude Quote by Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch’s refusal to finish an autobiography isn’t modesty; it’s strategy. He frames the project as something done to him - “Somebody talked me into it” - then performs a clean exit: “To hell with it.” That profanity does double duty. It sells blunt authenticity while also shutting down the premise that his life can be captured, pinned, and audited in a single, orderly narrative.

The most revealing move is how he describes the process: talking into a tape recorder. Not writing, not reflecting, not revising. Dictation suggests speed, control, and a CEO’s relationship to language: words as output. Then the emotional turn - “I was so depressed” - lands like a rare confession, but it’s also an argument. Autobiography equals “This is the end,” a premature obituary. For a man whose power has always depended on shaping tomorrow’s headlines, being asked to narrate his past reads as surrender.

The subtext is anti-accountability dressed as forward-looking vitality. Murdoch casts himself as restless, future-facing, allergic to nostalgia. Yet that “more interested in what the hell was coming” also echoes the media logic he helped perfect: attention as a rolling crisis, a next-day cliffhanger. In the context of his empire - built on perpetual motion, disruption, and agenda-setting - an autobiography would be a rare moment of containment, a chance for coherence. He declines coherence. He prefers the next week. That preference isn’t just temperament; it’s a worldview, and a business model.