Scandale Watergate Quotes

#1. Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that must have tormented him and his allies in all of the years that followed. #Quote by Thomas Mallon

#2. I was never for Richard Nixon until Watergate. #Quote by M. Stanton Evans

#3. The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam ... #Quote by J.G. Ballard

#4. 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. #Quote by Carl Bernstein

#5. 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. #Quote by Jonathan Alter

#6. 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. #Quote by Bob Woodward

#7. Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing. #Quote by Charles Krauthammer

#8. After Watergate, America was a ship without a rudder. Vietnam was left to its own devices, drifting along towards its fate. #Quote by Nguyen Cao Ky

#9. The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate. #Quote by Robert Dallek

#10. 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. #Quote by Joel Salatin

#11. The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. #Quote by Gerald R. Ford

#12. We're not going to have another Watergate in our lifetime. I'm sure. #Quote by Bob Woodward

#13. 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. #Quote by Hunter S. Thompson

#14. The influences in my life were all kind of politically, socially implanted. And then there was Watergate. #Quote by Tobe Hooper

#15. It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system. #Quote by Bob Woodward

#16. 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. #Quote by John Dean

#17. 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. #Quote by Hunter S. Thompson

#18. 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. #Quote by Helen Thomas

#19. 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. #Quote by Richard Ben-Veniste

#20. 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. #Quote by Eric Holder

#21. 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 . #Quote by John Wayne

#22. There have been as many investigative reporters on this newspaper working on Clinton's many problems as I can remember there were working on Watergate. #Quote by Ben Bradlee

#23. I went first. The card I drew was "Watergate." "Oh, come on," I said. "This is ridiculous."

"Don't whine," said Carter, his grin annoyingly smug. "We all take a random chance here."

They started the timer. I drew some remedial waves that immediately got a "Water!" from Cody. That was promising. Then, I drew what I hoped looked like a wall with a door in it. Apparently, I did too good a job.

"Wall," said Hugh.

"Door," said Cody.

I added some vertical lines to the door to emphasize the gate aspect. After a moment's thought, I drew a plus sign between the water and wall to show their connection.

"Aqueduct," said Cody.

"A bridge over troubled water," guessed Hugh.

"Oh my God," I groaned.

Unsurprisingly, my time ran out before my teammates could figure it out, though not before they guessed "Hoover Dam" and "Hans Brinker." With a groan, I flounced onto the couch. The other team then got a shot at it.

"Watergate," said Carter right away.

Hugh turned on me, face incredulous. "Why didn't you just draw a gate? #Quote by Richelle Mead

#24. 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. #Quote by Carl Bernstein

#25. 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. #Quote by Hunter S. Thompson

#26. What was Watergate? A little bugging! #Quote by Richard M. Nixon

#27. I think I would have done very well as a writer in the Forties. I think the last time America was a great country was then or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate. #Quote by Aaron Sorkin

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

#29. The period that I would anoint as the golden era in American journalism was from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. It had three separate major strands: the Civil Rights struggle over integration of schools and public facilities in the South; the Vietnam War; and Watergate. #Quote by Anonymous

#30. 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 #Quote by Carl Bernstein

#31. I remember when I was being told about Watergate, and I thought, "Oh, America is not what I think America is." But America is what I think it is. It's just that it's two bits of it, and I don't go with the Republican bit of it. I go more with the Democratic bit. #Quote by Eddie Izzard

#32. 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 #Quote by Pat Buchanan

#33. Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon's downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as "a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery," the greatest financial crime in history.

Often the term "conspiracy" is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Feder #Quote by Michael Parenti

#34. I'm not sure I've ever profited on the legacy of Watergate. #Quote by John Dean

#35. 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.' #Quote by Stephen Colbert

#36. The French were mystified about the Watergate scandal. #Quote by Pierre Salinger

#37. 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. #Quote by David Talbot

#38. 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. #Quote by Elliot Richardson

#39. Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity. #Quote by Bob Woodward

#40. 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. #Quote by Bob Woodward

#41. I remember being a kid and the Vietnam War was huge and looking at Watergate. #Quote by David Cross

#42. 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. #Quote by Daniel Keys Moran

#43. When President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate, he actually pardoned Alexander Haig for the JFK assassination. #Quote by Tegan Mathis

#44. 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. #Quote by Bob Woodward