With over 60 years of experience in the news business, the investigative journalist and anchor has learned a thing or two about people.

Throughout Dan Rather's illustrious career he has interviewed every president since Eisenhower and covered nearly every major political event in recent U.S. history: Watergate, President John F. Kennedy's assassination, 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the jailing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the list goes on. He also occupied the anchor seat at "CBS Evening News" for 24 years. Now 86, he is the author of the new book "What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism."

Amid the divisive political discourse that defined 2017, Rather felt it was important to reflect upon what unites Americans, instead of the partisan fault lines that often divide America. When asked what he's learned about the human condition from more than half a century of reporting, Rather told Salon that "gratitude, humility and modesty" are imperative to a leading a positive life.

"You don't hear present or past television anchormen talking very often about humility, but I'm here to testify that one of the things that I've learned about the human condition is that on a personal level and on a community and societal level the more gratitude, humility and modesty that one can muster, the better the human condition gets," Rather said.