The first rough draft of history.
BEN BRADLEEOur best today; better tomorrow.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
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Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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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.
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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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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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There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the 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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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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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.
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Our best today; better tomorrow.
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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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It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
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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.
BEN BRADLEE