You never monkey with the truth.
BEN BRADLEEI never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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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 history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
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The first rough draft of history.
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
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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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I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
BEN BRADLEE -
Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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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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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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National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail.
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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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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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Our best today; better tomorrow.
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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.
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The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEE