Bob Woodward Quotes

We're not going to have another Watergate in our lifetime. I'm sure.

The source known as Deep Throat provided a kind of road map through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg.

The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal.

Sometimes,doing nothing is the best reaction.

Watergate provides a model case study of the interaction and powers of each of the branches of government. It also is a morality play with a sad and dramatic ending.

I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.

Getting up in the morning and having work you love is what makes life different for people. If you get into a position where you don't love what you're doing, get off it.

When you see how the President makes political or policy decisions, you see who he is. The essence of the Presidency is decision-making.

I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.

It was accountability that Nixon feared.

The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know.

A reporter's ability to keep the bond of confidentiality often enables him to learn the hidden or secret aspects of government.

I don't think voters give a hoot about the character of their political advisors, except to the extent that character reflects on the candidates.

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.

The Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views.

Reporters may believe they control the story, but the story always controls the reporters.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

If you interviewed 1,000 politicians and asked about whether the media's "too soft" or "too hard," about 999 would say "too hard."

Clinton feels a profound alienation from the Washington culture here, and I happen to agree with him.

Good work is always done in defiance of management.

If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.

When you practice reporting for as long as I have, you keep yourself at a distance from True Believers. Either conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans.

Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.

I always am very aggressive and putting out much more than people would like, but that's the business I'm in.

Not a season passes without new disclosures showing Nixon's numerous attempts at criminal use of his presidential powers and in fact the scorn he held for the rule of law.

We need to police ourselves in the media.

The cloud of doubt that surrounds political figures tends to remain and never dissipate or be clarified.

There are people who take rumors and embellish them in a way that can be devastating. And this pollution has to be eradicated by people in our business as best we can.

I have found people don't want to be told. That they can figure it out.

He (former President Gerald Ford) made it very clear that he did not agree with the reasons President Bush laid out for the war, namely the belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that there was some obligation that the United States or the president had to expand democracy.

It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system.

Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect.

I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.

There is a garbage culture out there, where we pour garbage on people. Then the pollsters run around and take a poll and say, do you smell anything?

I think that everyone is kind of confused about the information they get from the media and rightly so. I'm confused about the information I get from the media.

I don't think it's useful for somebody to argue with reviews.

Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity.

Even now there is no evidence that anyone involved in the Nixon operation was going to threaten us.

Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.

There may yet be another Watergate book. I have thought a book about the aftermath of Watergate and its impact could be done, perhaps by me or someone else.

Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel.

In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.

Rawhide Down is full of spectacular, original reporting.

The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying, stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known.

Some newspapers have a hands-off policy on favored politicians. But it's generally very small newspapers or local TV stations.

Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

I'm not going to name some of my colleagues who are very well-known for their television presentation, but they wouldn't know new information or how to report a story if it came up and bit them.

I suspect there have been a number of conspiracies that never were described or leaked out. But I suspect none of the magnitude and sweep of Watergate.

Certain political figures think when you call them and ask them for a comment; that you are somehow doing something that you shouldn't be doing.

After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.