black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”

Ben Bradlee

As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
BEN BRADLEE

Adult Children Effectiveness
The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
BEN BRADLEE

Administration Pressure Running
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Country Guy Mad
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

Differences Newspapers People President Press
Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
BEN BRADLEE

Feel Good News Paper
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Editors Lazy Thinking
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

Gone Past Real
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Jobs Lying Running
It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
BEN BRADLEE

Campaign Claims Telling Truth
I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
BEN BRADLEE

Orbit Proof Resurrect Resurrection
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Girl Numbers People
Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
BEN BRADLEE

Encourage People Smarter
Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEE

Faces Graves Tape
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Editors Government National People Security
The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEE

Cooking Culinary Food
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

Journalism May Robbing

In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Bradlee Quotes