The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEENothing’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.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
BEN BRADLEE -
There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!
BEN BRADLEE -
More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
BEN BRADLEE -
Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
BEN BRADLEE -
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.
BEN BRADLEE -
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.
BEN BRADLEE -
If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.
BEN BRADLEE -
Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEE -
I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.
BEN BRADLEE -
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 -
As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
BEN BRADLEE -
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.
BEN BRADLEE -
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.
BEN BRADLEE -
You never monkey with the truth.
BEN BRADLEE






