You never monkey with the truth.
BEN BRADLEEThose [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!
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The biggest difference between Kennedy and Nixon, as far as the press is concerned, is simply this: Jack Kennedy really liked newspaper people and he really enjoyed sparring with journalists.
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It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”
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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.
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The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
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If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.
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I do worry about how newspapers respond to falling circulation figures. I’m not sure that the answer is for newspapers to try to cater to whatever seems to be the fad of the day.
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I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
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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.
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I don’t want to disappoint too many people, but the number of interesting political, historical conversations we had, you could stick in your ear, it wasn’t that many. We talked about friends, family and of course girls.
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So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that’s a national security matter. Well, you’re supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government.
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The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
BEN BRADLEE