Quotes & Sayings About Watergate

This is a world that's big enough for everyone. I like that message in that comes out of John Lasseter, and it comes out Pixar, it comes out of the Apple, Google, the Ben and Jerry's thing. These are American companies that send that message around that is good, that is healthy. And everyone goes, "That's the America I always believed in before Watergate." — Eddie Izzard

After Watergate, which happened when I was in college, I became increasingly inspired by journalism as a way to change the world. It sounds corny, but to wake the public up, to serve a higher cause. — David Talbot

I have tender feelings for Nixon because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn't like the Watergate trials 'cause they interrupted 'The Munsters.' — Stephen Colbert

Watergate was a constitutional crisis of the highest order. — Tom Brokaw

Religion, like Watergate, is a scandal that will not go away. — Dick Russell Peter Levenda

There was a pretty fair bike shop in McLean, and Bernstein drove there to kill a couple of hours and look halfheartedly for a replacement for his beloved Raleigh. But his mind was on Jeb Magruder. He had picked up a profoundly disturbing piece of information that day: Magruder was a bike freak. Bernstein had trouble swallowing the information that a bicycle nut could be a Watergate bugger. — Carl Bernstein

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. — Bob Woodward

For Carter, it was as if the ghosts of Watergate stalked the halls of the White House. As with most ghosts, he wasn't sure they existed, where they were or how to exorcise them. — Bob Woodward

In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon's arrogant, isolated presidency. But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency. — Jeff Greenfield

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. — Bob Woodward

Security Division of NASA: Headed by Werner von Braun. Nazi headquarters were moved to the Caribbean after World War II. The National Security Council, patterned after Hitler's intelligence apparat, provided the framework inside the White House for political assassinations, Watergate "Plumbers" and election manipulations. Agents from military intelligence and the armed forces were concealed inside defense projects. The Syndicate worked with the Defense Industrial Security Command. Robert Sheridan, appointed by George McGovern to "investigate Watergate for the Democrats," was the direct liaison to departments involved in the Kennedy assassination. The Watergate parallels are too great to not suspect a continuous working of this operation.28 — Mae Brussell

Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House. — Seymour Hersh

There was that last blast of Westerns that came out in the Seventies, those Vietnam/Watergate Westerns where everything was about demystification. And I like that about those movies. — Quentin Tarantino

I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate. — Sam Ervin

Nixon sent some no-account underling to tell us that he had done more for the American Indian than any predecessor and that he saw no reason for our coming to Washington, that he had more important things to do than to talk with us - presumably surreptitiously taping his visitors and planning Watergate. We wondered what all these good things were that he had done for us. — Mary Crow Dog

I didn't really see a way to make a living on the farm. I always loved writing. I was the guy who won the D.A.R. essay contest and things like that, and it was the era of Watergate, and I decided I would be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and then retire to the farm. — Joel Salatin

Watergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality. — Clare Boothe Luce

Reporters were ill paid in those days and lacked the resources in staff or money to dig deeply into McCarthy's charges. The Washington press corps was small. It was not until later, amid growing anger about a "cover-up" during the Vietnam War, that significant numbers of reporters became obstreperous in challenging "official" sources. Only in the 1970s, in the aftermath of Watergate, did this attitude become widespread among political journalists in the United States. — James T. Patterson

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. — Howard Fineman

This story, I predict, will grow to be worse than Watergate. The American people need to have the answers. — Curt Weldon

Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions. — Stephen Ambrose

he fought hard against corruption in all forms, especially with the Canal Ring (every scandal during this time seems to have the word "ring" attached to it, much like every scandal since Watergate has "gate" attached to it.) — Michael Rubbinaccio

I was raised - professionally - in the Public Integrity Section. I started in 1976, stayed there for 12 years. It was formed after Watergate by then-head of the Criminal Division Dick Thornburgh, who ultimately became Attorney General. — Eric Holder

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch. — Helen Thomas

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

Talbott understood that Nixon's private hospitality and his public obsession with U.S.-Russian relations were part of an elaborate rehabilitation scheme, designed to blur lingering memories of Watergate while serving as a reminder of his own, widely praised foreign policy accomplishments when he was president. — Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy

Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses ... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon. — Archibald Cox

The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate. — Robert Dallek

Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater's apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II
and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation's sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions. — David Frum

As a long-time registered Democrat who started voting in the year of Watergate, I resent being taken for a ride to the place where anything goes and nothing matters. And especially where nothing matters less than clear thinking and straight talk. — James Howard Kunstler

Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way. — Jonathan Alter

I was never for Richard Nixon until Watergate. — M. Stanton Evans

HST: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?
McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to--because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public--they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for. — Hunter S. Thompson

Lawyers didn't seriously get involved in the Watergate stories until quite late, when we realized we were on to something. — Bob Woodward

You know, speaking from experience, I can tell you that there's no aphrodisiac more potent than Watergate-themed cabaret music. — Martin Short

I hope you will respond to the crisis of confidence that Watergate has created by opening up your administration and reaching out to people in a more magnanimous spirit. — Elliot Richardson

I was a middle-of-the-road Democrat more than anything else. I know I voted for Carter. Watergate taught me how bad the Republicans were. — Dave Barry

But they could be frightening, too. "Watching Watergate in Archie Bunker Country," said the cover of the June 18 issue of New York magazine. It began with the author, top-drawer trend journalist Gail Sheehy, recording what happened when the proprietor of Terry's Bar in Astoria, Queens, asked his patrons if he might tune the bar's TV to the hearings. Nine men cried "Forget it!" "The majority called for Popeye cartoons. But Terry couldn't find a channel that wasn't polluted with the 'search for unvarnished truth.' They had no choice. Television was suppressing their freedom not to know." These ironworkers, sandhogs, elevator operators, and beer truck drivers said things like this: that Ted Kennedy "killed a broad" ("Now there was a mountain, and they made a molehill — Rick Perlstein

When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon's top aides - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell. — Richard Ben-Veniste

...if that Watergate case ever gets into court, he might get very nervous. — Hunter S. Thompson

After the 1970s, when President Nixon's illegal campaign cash was used as a secret slush fund to pay for the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Americans have demanded to know where the money fueling our elections is coming from. — Eric Schneiderman

Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity. — Bob Woodward

He never really voice pure, raw outrage to me about Watergate or what it represented. The crimes and abuses were background music. Nixon was trying to subvert not only the law but the Bureau. So Watergate became Felt's instrument to reassert the Bureau's independence and thus its supremacy. In the end, the Bureau was damaged, seriously but not permanently, while Nixon lost much more, maybe everything - the presidency, power, and whatever moral authority he might have had. He was disgraced. But surviving and enduring his hidden life, in contrast and in his own way, Mark Felt won. — Bob Woodward

The government paid the family of Richard Nixon $18 million for papers, tape recordings and other materials seized after Watergate. — Dexter Scott King

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news. — John Le Carre

The August 1 story had carried their joint byline; the day afterward, Woodward asked Sussman if Bernstein's name could appear with his on the follow-up story - though Bernstein was still in Miami and had not worked on it. From the on, any Watergate story would carry both names. Their colleagues melded the two into one and gleefully named their byline Woodstein.
Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

Watergate was unique because it allowed the public to play its democratic role in expressing its outrage at the presidency. And as a result, for the first time in history a president resigned. — Samuel Dash

Watergate is not the sort of issue that changes the vote. I don't know anyone who has changed their vote because of it. — Bob Woodward

The Watergate reforms did work well for many years, and if improved and broadened, these reforms can have real and major impact on the system today. — Elliot Richardson

You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period. — Sean MacBride

Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law. — Scott Turow

At heart, Sussman was a theoretician. In another age, he might have been a Talmudic scholar. He had cultivated a Socratic method, zinging question after question at the reporters: Who moved over from Commerce to CRP with Stans? What about Mitchell's secretary? Why won't anybody say when Liddy went to the White House or who worked with him there? Mitchell and Stans both ran the budget committee, right? What does that tell you? Then Sussman would puff on his pipe, a satisfied grin on his face. — Carl Bernstein

No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups-I've lived through Watergate-that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful-despite prison, torture, and death. — Charles Colson

From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law. — Leon Jaworski

The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do. — Carl Bernstein

You know, all this is speculating. I don't think any of us really know what's going on. I think there's always that pendulum action in American politics, and I expect Nixon to run into trouble in the next few years. I think there's going to be disillusionment over his war settlement. I think the economic problems are not going to get better and the problems in the great cities are going to worsen, and it may be that by '76 somebody can come along and win on a kind of platform that I was running on in '72. — Hunter S. Thompson

In his book The Shadow Presidents, author Michael Medved relates the extreme disappointment of H.R. Haldeman over his failure to implement his plan to link up all the homes in America by coaxial cable. In Haldeman's words, "There would be two-way communication. Through computer, you could use your television set to order up whatever you wanted. The morning paper, entertainment services, shopping services, coverage of sporting events and public events...Just as Eisenhower linked up the nation's cities by highways so that you could get there, the Nixon legacy would have linked them by cable communication so you wouldn't have to go there." One can almost see the dreamy eyes of Nixon and Haldeman as they sat around discussing a plan that would eliminate the need for newspapers, seemingly oblivious to its Big Brother aspects. Fortunately the Watergate scandal intervened, and Nixon was forced to resign before "the Wired Nation" could be hooked up. — David Wallechinsky

The facts of Watergate have been wildly exaggerated. — Conrad Black

I grew up a child of Watergate. It gave me a good dose of skepticism about authority. One of my favorite movies is 'All the President's Men.' Woodward and Bernstein, those guys were my heroes. I have a degree in journalism. — Chris Carter

Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty. — Russell Baker

I'm just made differently. Man, I just love being an American, I love my country. But it happened to me during the Nixon time, especially pre-Watergate, that as I watched Nixon for the first time in my life I felt shame. I had to analyze myself. What is this emotion? I realized that my government was separate from my country. It was the first time I ever felt ashamed of the government, not the country. — John Fogerty

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. — Bob Woodward

I'm not sure I've ever profited on the legacy of Watergate. — John Dean

Presidential power was overruled by the high bench in July 1974, when President Nixon was ordered to turn over some audio tapes of his White House conversations, including the 'smoking gun' tape of June 23, 1972, that revealing the Watergate cover up. — Helen Thomas

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave. — Dee Dee Myers

In post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, skeptical voters demand full disclosure of everything from candidates' finances to their medical records, and spin-savvy accounts of backstage machinations dominate political coverage. — Virginia Postrel

Sussman had the ability to seize facts and lock them in his memory, where they remained poised for instants recall. More than any other editor at the Post, or Bernstein and Woodward, Sussman became a walking compendium of Watergate knowledge, a reference source to be summoned when even the library failed. On a deadline, he would pump these facts into a story in a constant infusion, working up a body of significant information to support what otherwise seemed like the weakest of revelations. In Sussman's mind, everything fitted. Watergate was a puzzle and he was a collector of the pieces.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

Today we reject the notion of equality between a regime that belongs to the democratic world - even if it is conservative and disagreeable - and a totalitarian dictatorship, whether its colors are black, red, or green. This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for Watergate. — Adam Michnik

I sat next to Carl Bernstein throughout Watergate, and Woodward would come over, and they would argue everything out, so I was really tuned into what happened. — Ronald Kessler

Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it. — John Dean

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. — Bob Woodward

No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency - a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect. — Richard M. Nixon

The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it. — Hunter S. Thompson

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

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. — Bob Woodward

Watergate had become the center of the media's universe, and during the remaining year of my presidency the media tried to force everything else to revolve around it. — Richard M. Nixon

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. — Bob Woodward

Even Napoleon had his Watergate. — Yogi Berra

There were no dead bodies in Watergate. — Monica Crowley

You can see where it's going. The extraordinary political apathy that followed Watergate and Vietnam and the institutionalization of grass-roots rebellion among minorities will only deepen. Politics is about consensus, and the advertising legacy of the sixties is that consensus is repression. Voting'll be unhip: Americans now vote with their wallets. Government's only cultural role will be as the tyrannical parent we both hate and need. Look for us to elect someone who can cast himself as a Rebel, maybe even a cowboy, but who deep down we'll know is a bureaucratic creature who'll operate inside the government mechanism instead of naively bang his head against it the way we've watched poor Jimmy do for four years. — David Foster Wallace

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn ... pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness ... towards the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue, and trying desperately to remember which one of those fore hundred identical balconies is the one outside of Martha Mitchell's apartment ... Ah ... Nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. — Hunter S. Thompson

I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong. — Tom Brokaw

Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that. — Rick Perlstein

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth. — Daniel Keys Moran

I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously, and those who feel like they want to sneakily, and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate. — Rod Blagojevich

Rosenfeld went to work for the Herald Tribune after his graduation from Syracuse University and has always been an editor, never a reporter. He was inclined to worry that too many reporters on the metropolitan staff were incompetent, and thought even the best reporters could be saved from self-destruction only by the skills of an editor. His natural distrust of reporters was particularly acute on the Watergate story, where the risks were very great, and he was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust Bernstein and Woodward more than he had ever trusted any reporters.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America. — Tony Campolo

You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate. — P. J. O'Rourke

Reagan won because he was real. He believed in America. He told people he was gonna make it great again coming out of a disastrous four years of Jimmy Carter and Watergate before that. — Rush Limbaugh

I think the media has become incredibly corrupt. We used to have a profound tradition of investigative journalism in the United States. Some journalists were real heroes, such as Bob Woodward who helped uncover the Watergate scandal. But today he is leading the opposite charge, trying to bring down the careers of people and score easy victories. In other words, those who used to bust the status quo have now become the status quo. — Marianne Williamson

for the 2016 election, the political war chest accumulated by the Kochs and their small circle of friends was projected to be $889 million, completely dwarfing the scale of money that was considered deeply corrupt during the Watergate days. The — Jane Mayer

Indeed, it was largely the clubbiness of the Washington village press corps that let Nixon get away with Watergate and still win his landslide in 1972. — Rick Perlstein

Watergate is a sad and tragic incident in our history. They were wrong, dead wrong, those men at Watergate. Men abused power, but the system still works. Men abused money, but the system still works. Men lied and perjured themselves, but the system still . — John Wayne

I think that in the minds of many, the press is being seen less and less as a neutral observer in the impeachment enterprise and more and more as participants, or even collaborators. On Media's Participation In Watergate — Pat Buchanan

A censure would put an indelible scar on the president's place in history, .. Monica Lewinsky is not Watergate. Let he who has no sin in this chamber cast the first stone. — Bob Menendez

Finally, I will forever be grateful to W. Mark Felt. It was a tug-of-war at times, but he came through, providing the kind of guidance, information and understanding that were essential to the Watergate story. — Bob Woodward

James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes, great complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. — Peter Morgan

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him. — Billy Graham

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. — Bob Woodward

An attempt is already underway to revise history - to leave the impression that the former president had nothing to do with Watergate. But there is no doubt about his obstruction of justice after the Watergate break-in. — John J. Sirica