All the President's Men quotes

View Quote Woodward: This man Gordon Liddy--he's going to be tried along with Hunt and the five burglars--we know he knows a lot, we just don't know what.
Deep Throat: You changed cabs? You're sure no one followed you?
Woodward: I did everything you said, but it all seemed--
Deep Throat: Melodramatic? Things are past that--remember, these are men with switchblade mentalities who run the world as if it were Dodge City.
Woodward: What's the whole thing about--do you know?
Deep Throat: What I know, you'll have to find out on your own.
Woodward: Liddy--you think there's a chance he'll talk?
Deep Throat: Talk? Once, at a gathering, he put his hand over a candle. And he kept it there. He kept it right in the flame until his flesh seared. A woman who was watching asked, "What's the trick?" And he replied. "The trick is not minding."

View Quote Woodward: This should take only a minute, Mr. Dahlberg, but we're doing a follow-up on the break-in...and I was kind of curious about your check.
Dahlberg: Check?
Woodward: The twenty-five thousand dollar one....The one with your name on it...In Bernard Barker's Florida account...Bernard Barker, the Watergate burglar.
Dahlberg: You're definitely doing a story?
Woodward: Yes, sir.
Dahlberg: I'm a proper citizen, I'm a decent man, I don't do anything that isn't decent or proper. [pause] I know I shouldn't tell you this...That twenty-five thousand dollars is money I collected for Nixon in this year's campaign.
Woodward: I see. And how do you think it reached Miami?
dahlberg: I don't know; I really don't. The last time I saw it was when I was in Washington. I gave it to the Finance department of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. How it got to that burglar, your guess is as good as mine.

View Quote Woodward: What the hell were you doing rewriting my story?
Bernstein: I sure couldn't hurt it, could I?
Woodward: It was fine the way it was.
Bernstein: It was bullshit the way it was.
Woodward: I have to stand here and listen to the staff correspondent from Virginia?
Bernstein: What have you been here, nine months? I been in this business since I was sixteen.
Woodward: And you've had some ****ing meteoric rise, that's for sure. By the time you turn forty you might be the head of the Montana bureau.
Bernstein: You only got the job because both you and Bradlee went to Yale.
Woodward: Bradlee went to Harvard.
Bernstein: They're all the same, all those Ivy League places. They teach you about striped ties and suddenly you're smart.
Woodward: I'm smart enough to know my story was solid.
Bernstein: Mine's better.
Woodward: No way.
Bernstein: Read 'em both and you'll see.
[Woodward reads the stories]
Woodward: Crap.
Bernstein: Is mine better?
[Woodward nods]
Woodward: What is it about my writing that's so rotten?
Bernstein: Mainly it has to do with your choice of words.

View Quote Woodward: Who's Charles Colson?
Rosenfeld: I would liken your query to being in Russia half a century ago and asking someone, "I understand who Lenin is and Trotsky I got too, but who's this yokel Stalin?"
Woodward: Who's Colson, Harry?
Rosenfeld: The most powerful man in America is President Nixon, probably you've heard his name. The second most powerful man is Robert Haldeman. Just below him are a trio: Mr. Erlichman is Haldeman's friend, and they protect the President from everybody which is why they are referred to as either The German Shepherds or the Berlin Wall. Mr. Mitchell we've already discussed. Mr. Colson is the President's special counsel.
Woodward: Thanks, Harry. Know anything about Colson?
Rosenfeld: Just that on his office wall there's a cartoon with a caption reading, "When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."

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 [to Ben Bradlee] Benjy, we got a present for you. Above the fold on page one for sure. It may not change our lives one way or the other. Just a good, solid piece of American Journalism that The New York Times doesn't have.

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 [to Wodward] I can't sell hints to Simons-- you called everyone you know? Call someone you don't know.

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 As a rough rule of thumb, as far as I can throw Bronco Nagurski, that's how much I trust John Mitchell...

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 CREEP financed the Watergate break-in, Jesus Christ.

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 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 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"?