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Daily Inspiration Quote by Morley Safer

"We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit"

About this Quote

There is a sly, almost newsroom-deadpan shrug in Safer’s line, but it lands like a quiet indictment of how institutions calcify. “We are on Sunday night” sounds logistical, even banal, until he pins it to “where they put us 30-odd years ago” - the passive construction doing real work. No heroic origin story, no visionary programming strategy. Just placement. And then inertia.

“I think we became a habit” is the twist: affectionate on the surface, faintly ominous underneath. Habits are comforting; they’re also unexamined. Safer is describing a particular kind of cultural power, the kind earned not through viral moments or loud branding but through ritual. You don’t “choose” the Sunday-night newsmagazine so much as you return to it, like setting the coffee maker or checking the locks. The audience’s loyalty becomes muscle memory.

The context is the long reign of 60 Minutes as a broadcast cornerstone and Safer as one of its most recognizable correspondents. Sunday night isn’t just a time slot; it’s an appointment with national conscience-making, a weekly frame for what matters. Safer’s subtext acknowledges the bargain: the show’s authority comes from consistency, but that same consistency risks becoming complacency - a product kept alive by tradition as much as by urgency. He’s hinting that longevity can be both credibility and a trap, and that the scariest kind of influence is the kind you stop noticing.

Quote Details

TopicHabits
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Safer, Morley. (2026, January 17). We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-on-sunday-night-because-that-is-where-they-57153/

Chicago Style
Safer, Morley. "We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-on-sunday-night-because-that-is-where-they-57153/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-are-on-sunday-night-because-that-is-where-they-57153/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us
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About the Author

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Morley Safer (November 8, 1931 - May 19, 2016) was a Journalist from Canada.

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