Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEESo, 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.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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Our best today; better tomorrow.
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I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.
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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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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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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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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.
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Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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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.
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!
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You never monkey with the truth.
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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 is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
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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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Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
BEN BRADLEE