“As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free.”

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.

Generals who can write always make me nervous.

Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.

It’s very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don’t seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Nothing’s riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I’m gonna get mad.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy, and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That’s just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It’s very, it’s very exciting.

The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.

As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.

It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.

The first rough draft of history.

To hell with news! I’m no longer interested in news. I’m interested in causes. We don’t print the truth. We don’t pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It’s up to the public to decide what’s true.

A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn’t the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn’t going to say every day,

I have never owned a computer. I am one of those weirdos. I’ve never needed a computer. I’m lucky that I have a job where I’m not required to use one.

I always sort of talk about – to myself at least, or to my friends, about wanting to just keep life very simple. I’ve found it most simple here in New York.

I went to Tokyo three years ago. It was a job, though. I did an ad campaign for IBM, so they flew me out there to take pictures of me. It was IBM Global. It went to Australia, France, London, all over the world. But I think the ad campaign was a failure, because of me.

We must never forget that it is the private sector – not government – that is the engine of economic opportunity. Businesses, particularly small businesses, flourish and can provide good jobs when government acts as a productive partner.

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

If I run into someone on the street, that’s one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.

We need an equal opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors?