All the President's Men quotes

View Quote Either of you want a drink or should I order? Because--because our ****s are on the chopping block and you've got to be sure that you're not just dealing with people who hate Richard Nixon and want to get him through us. You see, I don't give a shit who's President--I really don't, it's an adversary situation between them and us and it's always gonna be. I never had a closer friend than Jack Kennedy and once I printed something that pissed him off and for seven months I didn't exist.

View Quote You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up... 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, 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 **** up again, I'm gonna lose my temper. I promise you, you don't want me to lose my temper.

View Quote The head of security for the reelection of a Republican President got caught bugging the national offices of the Democrats? What the hell does that mean?

View Quote Hi, I'm Bob Woodward of the Washington Post--and--what's that?--you've never heard of me?--I can't help that--you don't believe I'm with the Post?--what do you want me to do, Madam, shout "extra--extra"?

View Quote [about Martha Mitchell] I just don't get it; a CREEP secretary being scared, that's one thing. But what does the wife of one of the most powerful men in America have to be afraid of?

View Quote This is terrific work, if you like rejection.

View Quote At Yale once, they held an auction. There was this woman and her name was Lulu Landis. Her postcards came up for sale. She had 1400 postcards written to her and I'd never heard of her before but I knew I had to have those cards, I had to know why anyone would get so many messages. I paid sixty-five dollars for them... I got all crazy trying to work it out and first it was just a maze but then I found that her husband killed himself in Dayton, and once I had that, it all began to open, an evangelist had come to Dayton and his horses hit Lulu Landis at the corner of 13th and Vermillion and she was paralyzed. Permanently, and her favorite thing til then had been traveling and all her friends, whenever they went anyplace, they wrote her. Those cards, they were her eyes...

View Quote I lived here all my life, I got a million contacts, but they're all bus boys and bellhops.

View Quote [to Martin Dardis] Look, you've been jerking my chain all day. If there's some reason you can't talk to me--like the fact that you've already leaked everything to The New York Times--just say so.

View Quote My first day as a copy boy I was sixteen and wearing my only grown-up suit--it was cream colored. At 2:30 the head copy boy comes running up to me and says, "My God, haven't you washed the carbon paper yet? If it's not washed by three, it'll never by dry for tomorrow." And I said, "Am I supposed to do that?" and he said, "Absolutely, it's crucial." So I run around and grab all the carbon paper from all the desks and take it to the men's room. I'm standing there washing it and it's splashing all over me and the editor comes in to take a leak, and he says, "What the **** do you think you're doing?" And I said, "It's 2:30. I'm washing the carbon paper." Just wanted you to know I've done dumber things than get us lost, that's all.

View Quote Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story?!...You guys are about to write a story that says the former Attorney General, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in this country, is a crook! Just be sure you're right...Leave plenty of room for his denial.

View Quote Once when I was reporting, Lyndon Johnson's top guy gave me the word they were looking for a successor to J. Edgar Hoover. I wrote it and the day it appeared Johnson called a press conference and appointed Hoover head of the FBI for life... And when he was done, he turned to his top guy and the President said, "Call Ben Bradlee and tell him **** you." I took a lot of static for that--everyone said, "You did it, Bradlee, you screwed up--you stuck us with Hoover forever." I screwed up but I wasn't wrong. You guys haven't been wrong yet, is that why you're scared shitless? You should be.

View Quote It's like they taught us at Harvard: few things are as gratifying to the soul as having another man's nuts in a vise.

View Quote All right, you made a mistake maybe, we all have, just don't make another. And watch your personal lives, who you hang around with. Someone once said the price of democracy is a bloodletting every ten years. Make sure it isn't our blood.

View Quote Now hold it, hold it. We're about to accuse Mr. Haldeman, who only happens to be the second most important man in America, of conducting a criminal conspiracy from inside the White House. It would be nice if we were right.