The West Wing Quotes & Sayings

I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book. — Rob Lowe

Whether it's 'Veep' or 'Homeland' or 'The West Wing' - which is a more idealised version of democracy - people are fascinated by politics. — Kevin Spacey

There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was "socialism gone wrong." This thought expresses precisely the major political danger of our times, which is the belief that politics involves a choice of systems, as a means to an end, so that one system may "go wrong" while another "goes right." The truth is that socialism is wrong, precisely because it believes that it can go right - precisely because it sees politics asa means to an end. Politics is a manner of social existence, whose bedrock is the given obligations from which our social identities are formed. Politics is a form of association which is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is founded on legitimacy, and legitimacy resides in our sense that we are made by our inheritance. — Roger Scruton

'West Wing' was huge. Like 'Hamilton,' it pulls back the curtain on how decision-making happens at the highest level, or at least how you hope it would be. The amount of information Aaron Sorkin packs into a scene gave me this courage to trust the audience to keep up. — Lin-Manuel Miranda

The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their Mother and from the Father in Heaven. You might go East so far the East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus. — C.S. Lewis

Don't tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. — Aaron Sorkin

I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again. — Aaron Sorkin

The key word about The West Wing is show. It is not a reality show. It has nothing to do with reality. — Martin Sheen

The black church is dormant, much of the community is dormant. If the black church is leaning toward the right, much of the community is leaning toward the right. If it is leaning in the left wing direction having repercussions. — Cornel West

The right wing can use anything, and we have to make it very clear and I make it very clear that my love for the president in terms of protecting him and respecting him but also correcting, now all three of those are crucial, and if I can do all three, then the right wing can use it whatever they want, and I'm just clear where I stand, over against them but also critical when the president leans toward the strong, rather than the weak. — Cornel West

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could. — Alex Graves

It's funny, I had dinner with my dear friend John Spencer last night and I'm not in the first episode, but he's at the beginning of it and he was telling me about it and I thought this sounds very hot because I think this is definitely the last year of West Wing. — Stockard Channing

The ceiling in the mess was very low, not even eight feet. You can feel the weight of the West Wing above your head, and with the the weight of American memory. — David Frum

Liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms. — Cornel West

It's nice to be thought of as attractive and all of that. On the other hand, it curtails you somewhat, too. They won't let me read for 'West Wing,' just to play, you know, a normal person. Or 'ER,' to play a doctor - the things I'm actually good at. I mean, I'm pretty good on foreign policy - they won't even let me come read for that. — Morgan Fairchild

NBC's The West Wing is an icon for bad stories; Gitmo is a place where we keep an eye on evil, dangerous people who want to kill us. — Ann Coulter

I love The West Wing for many reasons. The show has been a fantasy. But we have offered a parallel universe to reality. — Martin Sheen

It was a shock to my system leaving 'The West Wing' and going to 'Psych.' I remember being like, 'What are you doing?' when James Roday first started improvising. Steve and the writing staff write it that way. They leave gaps. — Dule Hill

So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!") and then do another
quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That's the difference. — Michael Moore

Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. — Aaron Sorkin

If you've ever been in the West Wing, it's like a little rabbit warren. Everybody's crammed in there on top of each other, and you're eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the mess with people. And so you really get to know each other very well. So, I think they just weren't worried. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

I don't know if it's a romantic comedy but I'm in the beginning of the first of the season of 'The West Wing.' We shot it last year. I don't know. If anyone asks me to be in one, I'll jump on it. — Jason Isaacs

Her shadow crossed the dunes, smaller now. Ahead lay the south desert, limitless. Soon she turned slowly, with the sun swinging across the port wing-tip, and headed west as they had planned. — Elleston Trevor

'Feed' is about zombies and politics and blogging. It's about how George Romero actually saved the world! It's 'Night Of The Living Dead' meets 'The West Wing.' — Seanan McGuire

Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing , let alone to be a real one. — Ann Coulter

The West Wing seems to be feeding the myth about how presidential politics are. — William Devane

The interesting thing for me is, if that had been a left-wing person raising questions, [President Obama] probably would have expressed his anger. Because Obama really does get upset about progressives. — Cornel West

Only a free West can help the prisoners of today's left- and right-wing dictatorships. — Barbara Amiel

Like they said about The West Wing, you can't do a show about Washington until you can. — Josh Schwartz

Anything that Aaron Sorkin writes, I could watch a million times. One of the few shows that I've watched in repeats was 'The West Wing.' — Ben Feldman

The idea of my kids being spoiled, I go to sleep thinking about it. I wake up thinking about. I'm trying to do the right thing. With the amount of money I have, it's difficult to raise children the way I was raised. But I took away the west and north wing of the house for those guys. So, they're not allowed in there. — Adam Sandler

The West is supporting, even financing the right-wing media, it is financing 'the opposition', encourages capital flight of billions of dollars, works closely with the local 'elites' to create 'deficits', 'uncertainty' and despair. It creates corruption scandals, and it even supports fake 'left' anti-government movements. And of course it is training and corrupting some key military cadres. — Andre Vltchek

The thing with 'The West Wing' is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality - these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had. — Alex Pareene

I'm praying for Barack Obama to stay on the tightrope because I want to fight his right-wing critics. I want to down I want to ensure they don't lie about him. I'm sure they don't demonize him, and too much of that is going on. So I don't want my critiques to be in any way confused with the right-wing critiques, even though I'll fight for the right wing to be wrong in that regard. — Cornel West

Allison Janney's character in 'The West Wing' was so rocking! I am a huge fan of Mary Louis Parker and her character in 'Weeds.' My manager says, 'you have to grow into yourself, Allison' because all the characters I want to play are, like, 39. — Allison Mack

I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course - for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers - but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, "They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves. — J.D. Vance

I would have strong opinions and be prepared to argue my case, but if you talk to my colleagues, I think you'd find they consider me the jokester, the informal mayor of the West Wing. — Karl Rove

It's important to remember that, first and foremost, if not only, this is entertainment. 'The West Wing' isn't meant to be good for you. — Aaron Sorkin

I've loved every minute I've spent in television. And I've had much more failure, as traditionally measured, than success in television. I've done four shows, and only one of them was the 'West Wing.' — Aaron Sorkin

I've been on plenty of things that never took off, and I've been on one thing, 'The West Wing,' that was a big hit, but took off well before I was on it. — Joshua Malina

Banning paper and plastic and making shoppers carry their groceries home in their mouths like dogs is just the thing to make a little tin humanist in the Obama West Wing think he's admiral of the Uzbek Navy. — P. J. O'Rourke

One of the cool things, obviously there's Scandal, House of Cards, there was West Wing. Other than that Jack Lemmon/James Garner movie about ex-presidents, no one's ever done anything in this area, whereas a lot of times, we do a story where someone goes, "Oh, yeah, they did someone sleeping with a Secret Service agent on House of Cards." — David Mandel

Saving the world via medical research or going off to Gobi Desert to dust off dinosaur eggs is what I thought I might be doing when I was a kid, and I'd love to bring those interests to a show like 'E.R.' or 'The West Wing,' or a movie like 'Jurassic Park.' — Morgan Fairchild

'The West Wing' was really important for me for a lot of reasons. It was the first thing I did when I got out to Los Angeles. I'd just finished school, and I was so naive. — Claire Coffee

I guess at the age of 15 was the first time I made a goal of wanting to be on television, and I didn't get a series until I was 23, which was 'The West Wing.' — Dule Hill

Michelle has had to grapple with Hilary Clinton's legacy as First Lady ... Michelle Obama never wants to be seen as the kind of First Lady who is overly involved in the West Wing. — Jodi Kantor

No one should be allowed to work in the West Wing of the White House who has not suffered a major disappointment in life... the responsibility of working there was too great... to be entrusted to people who weren't painfully aware of how badly things can go wrong. — Charles Murray

I vividly remember my first day on the White House staff. My office, of course, was in the Old Executive Office Building. I didn't rate one in the West Wing; but don't try to tell me or any of the rest of us working there that we weren't working in the White House. — John Roberts

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes ... Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense.
Sam Seaborne, West Wing — Aaron Sorkin

I have a surprise for you," the Beast had said, in his usual brusque tone.
Belle had just come in from feeding her horse, Philippe, and was standing by the kitchen's back door, shaking snow from her cloak. She'd taken one look at him - at the scowl on his face, at his clenched paws, at his awkward stance - and said, "No, thank you."
The Beast had blinked, taken aback by her refusal. His scowl had deepened. "I said, I have a surprise for you!"
"And I heard you," Belle had replied, "but I've had enough surprises to last me a lifetime. Including cold, dark cells, packs of wolves, and tantrums."
"Tantrums? Tantrums?" the Beast had sputtered. "I can't believe ... How can you say ... That wasn't a tantrum! And it wasn't my fault! I told you not to go to the West Wing. I told you -"
Belle had given him a sidelong look. "You're right. What was I thinking? You'd never throw a tantrum. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to hang up my cloak. — Jennifer Donnelly

When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good. — Aaron Sorkin

My way of getting the best from people on a set is to notice their work, to make every prop master, every seamstress, part of 'The Newsroom' or 'The West Wing' or 'Steve Jobs.' — Aaron Sorkin

One thing I think is least realistic is that there were five people that made decisions in the fictional 'West Wing.' In real life, there are about five million people that weigh in. — Dee Dee Myers

If the characters on 'The West Wing' were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn't find it believable. — Aaron Sorkin

When I started on 'The West Wing,' that was at a time when this was still a stigma, because movie stars didn't do TV. Now, every movie star is desperate to find their 'True Detective.' — Rob Lowe

I want to learn something from my atheistic brothers and sisters, even though I'm a Christian. I want to learn something from my right-wing brothers and sisters, even though I'm a progressive. I want to learn something from the elderly, even though I'm middle-aged or tilting toward the elderly. I want to learn especially something from the youth. That's why I spend a lot of time in hip-hop studios. — Cornel West

I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors. — Christopher Hitchens

The Thwaites lived on Central Park West in the upper Eighties, in a building that, while manifestly grand, particularly to someone from Ohio, was by no means the most elegant among its neighbors. Its lobby, for one thing, was little more than a wide corridor, with two drably upholstered wing chairs propped against a wall and, between them, a glass table upon which rested an elaborate but unaesthetic arrangement of silk flowers. The light in the corridor was greenish, dim and lavatorial, barely illuminating the shallowly carved figures that marched, in pseudo-Egyptian fashion, along the pink stone tiles as far as the elevator. The floor, incongruously, was of a black and white parquet, upon which all but the softest slippers echoed ominously. And the elevator itself - paneled, with brass fixtures and a single tiny red velvet stool, presumably for its operator's comfort - seemed again of a different, though no less ancient, era. — Claire Messud

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? — Aaron Sorkin

I was actually privately in the White House like invited by Clinton to screen Independence Day, so I know how the private residence looks. I didn't snap a picture, but I have a photographic memory and then I could take a guided tour in the West Wing. — Roland Emmerich

Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?' — Aaron Sorkin

I'm an enormous fan of 'The West Wing.' It was one of the very few shows I would watch every week. — Mike Nichols

I've been lucky enough in 'The West Wing' and 'Brothers & Sisters' to talk about the issues that are important to me with none of the awful mud-slinging or public scrutiny you have in politics. — Rob Lowe

I love a bit of political drama; 'The West Wing' is probably my favourite television series of all time. — David Tennant

What's gratifying about West Wing is that everybody told us that it couldn't be done - that the man or woman on the street didn't care about politics. But if you set things up correctly, people don't have a problem with it. — Rob Lowe

And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe. — Aaron Sorkin

That's the great thing about 'The West Wing:' you really felt like you were in the thick of it. — Joss Whedon

We all know from growing up with TV that John Wells shows are usually very large ensembles with amazingly written characters. He tends to redefine the way stories are told in a specific genre, whether it's 'China Beach,' 'The West Wing,' or 'E.R.' — Michael Cudlitz

By the end of an intense four years at UCLA, I had co-authored a new math proof, which the media, in fact, loved. As it turned out, math itself blazed my entry back into the spotlight and consequently into wonderful acting jobs like 'The West Wing' and others. You just never know, do you? — Danica McKellar

I hope that through my example, such as my role on 'The West Wing,' I can help change attitudes on deafness and prove we can really do everything ... except hear. — Marlee Matlin

I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff. I just love it. I've loved it ever since I was on 'The West Wing.' — Rob Lowe

It is interesting that the rhetoric and some state initiatives of multiculturalism in the West are accompanied by the gathering strength of right wing politics....Everywhere in the West 'immigration,' a euphemistic expression for racist labor and citizenship policies, has become a major election platform....The media and some members of the Canadian intelligentsia speak in terms of the end of 'Canadian culture,' displaying signs of feeling threatened by these 'others,' who are portrayed as an invasive force. In the meantime, Western capital roves in a world without borders, with trade agreements such as GATT and NAFTA ensuring their legal predations, while labour from third world countries is both locked in their national spaces and locked out from Western countries, marked by a discourse of illegality and alienness. — Himani Bannerji

Is there anything else I can do to see to your comfort, Miss Trent?" Perriwick inquired.
"She's fine," Blake growled.
"Clearly, she
"
"Perriwick, isn't the west wing on fire?"
Perriwick blinked, sniffed the air, and stared at his employer in dismay. "I do not understand sir. — Julia Quinn

Because if you remember - and people forget this - the first two years of Game of Thrones everybody was going, "I don't know what's going on, but I really like it." And you really didn't know what to make of a lot of people, and now it's changed and people aren't really talking about that. Now it's like you're watching West Wing or Friends, you know the characters and you're like, "What in the world is going to happen?" — Alex Graves

There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60' ... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough. — Aaron Sorkin

I think 'The West Wing' hit at a moment in time that was just right for that show. — Thomas Schlamme

Run, run, far away from him or her, and say what President Bartlet once said on The West Wing: "Stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it." White — Phoebe Robinson

When we were doing 'Sports Night' and 'West Wing' at the same time, I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world because my two interests were politics and sports. — Thomas Schlamme

I knew with The West Wing that that wasn't going to be for very long, that I was just the red herring. — William Devane

There are many interactions that an actor like me has in public when he gets recognized. The best are 'You're a great actor, good work,' and move on. A very good interaction could be when they say 'You were awesome on 'The West Wing,' 'Loved 'In Her Shoes,' great movie,' 'What Women Want,' good job dude.' — Mark Feuerstein

The best episodes of 'The West Wing' that dealt with policy and stuff, in my opinion, were the ones where they were in the middle of a crisis, and they were trying to figure out how to solve problems. — Michael Schur

I have talked to more people who are in politics who have said to me, "[House of Cards] is closer than you can imagine. It's the most accurate description of how politics actually works that we've ever seen." I mean, West Wing - beautiful, wonderful idea of how democracy should work. But I've had more people in politics say they think House of Cards is closer. I - don't know whether to take that as a compliment or a sad state of affairs. — Kevin Spacey

I loved 'The West Wing'; it's my favourite-ever television show. — Rupert Evans