Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Grab whom you must. Do what you want.
I'm a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House.
I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?
Yeah, I shoot my mouth off. There's a huge difference between writing and thinking.
Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me.
I think the moment anybody seriously tampers with the First Amendment, you're going to see an outcry.
Tracking down people who did not want to be found was vital to what I did for a living, and I was good at it.
I always believe in truth. Sometimes I know truth others don't. That puts me in a little bit of jeopardy sometimes.
Most of the important secrets that I've known about, the real secrets that are known about aren't worth publishing.
I don't think I've ever met a public official that didn't think he was doing the right thing. I can't think of one.
I sometimes think that we underestimate Trump, but that's just my opinion. I always like to tack the other way, I guess.
I can tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the American people think. There's going to be an awful lot more body bags.
I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life.
We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place.
The day after 9/11, we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing that George Kennan warned us never to do - to expand NATO too far.
I happen to write a lot of stories that make Kissinger look bad. I'd rather that the stories weren't true, but they all happen to be true.
Using words to make other people less big made me feel bigger, though the psychological dimension to that... well, I don't want to explore it.
I'm not convinced that every secret has to be published. I think there are secrets worth keeping, and I think there are secrets not worth keeping.
I have a theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.
I hate to see the way journalism is devalued: We have to feed the machine; we have to feed the Trump outrage machine, to feed the anger against Trump, to feed the New York liberal anger.
I came out of a lower-middle-class background. At that time, everyone used to define themselves: Stalinist, Maoist, whatever. I thought they meant 'miaowist'. Seriously! Something to do with cats.
The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.
I would think Trump would feel free to bomb Syria any time he wanted. Nobody clearly seems to care very much about if we bomb Syria. Whether or not we have authority, it's just not of interest to most people.
We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gaddafi was our Hitler.
We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler.
It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me. What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community.
If you think I write stories where it is all right to just be good enough, are you kidding? You think I have a cavalier attitude on throwing stuff out? Are you kidding? I am not cavalier about what I do for a living.
I think for the great majority of the American people, they've suffered economically under Obama and they really are looking forward to Trump delivering more money in their pocket. I think they haven't lost faith yet.
I'm worried about people who say Bush is lying. It's much more frightening that he's not lying, that he believes what he believes: that it's his mission to change the Middle East into a democracy. That's more unnerving.
Bush can talk about 100,000 people wanting to go work in the police or in the army. It's because there's nothing else for them to do. They're willing to stand in line to get bombed because they want to take care of their family.
The National Security Adviser is supposed to be an arbiter of policy and open minded in internal debates. But the playing field was never balanced. It was always tilted toward Rumsfeld's position, which is obviously the same as Bush's.
In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn't happening now, but I will tell you, there has never been an American army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.
If Bush had gone into Iraq for cynical reasons, we could cut our losses now. What's frightening is that he did it for ideological reasons, and therefore he's not going to get out. So it isn't ultimately about oil or about Israel, it's about a belief.
I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever... Not that journalism is always wonderful - it's not - but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.
I don't know whether God talks to him or whether he's trying to undo what his father did. But he believes in the mission. The body bags aren't going to deter him. Public dissent isn't going to deter him. He's going to go ahead. And that's more frightening.
I don't know Condoleezza Rice personally. I'm sure she's a nice lady, and I'm sure she plays the piano well. But she was a very bad National Security Adviser. The National Security Adviser is supposed to be an arbiter of policy and open minded in internal debates.
I say to people, 'Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that, to write 7,000 words in 10 hours or 12 hours for the front page of the 'New York Times' and to know that they trust you so much that that it's going to lead the paper?' It's hard. I mean, it's a feat.
The reality is that Qaddafi has been trying to talk to us about his weapons system for years, and we ignored him. The Libyans even came to me about two years ago and offered me a chance to go through their facilities because they couldn't get anybody's attention here.
The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in.
I wrote a lot about Cheney in 'The New Yorker,' but I wrote very little of what I know. The only time I ever mentioned what he ever said at a meeting was when there were many people there who were not insiders, you know, other people not in the government, so my sources would be protected.
I say openly that I am an anti-war person, with the point being, show me some reason not to be against this war. You have to be sort of asleep at the switch not to be critical of it. And the parallel between one quagmire we went through in Vietnam and the one we're in now is clear for everybody to see.
I think journalist is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting.Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.
How can you have a security guarantee? The Europeans can give their security guarantees to Iran all they want in return for their stopping their enrichment. But as long as America says we're going to stay out here and we're not going to drop the stick, we're going to pound you if we have to, it's not going to work.
I joined the 'Times' in 1972, and I came with the mark of Cain on me because I was clearly against the war. But my editor, Abe Rosenthal, he hired me because he liked stories. He used to come to the Washington bureau and almost literally pat me on the head and say, 'How is my little Commie today? What do you have for me?'
They are people who, by and large, think the Administration's policy - and the Iranian case is a classic one - is very stupid. They can't get that view in, and so by talking to me, they accomplish something. It's a way of saying, this ought to be discussed, we got to get this out. That's a form of patriotism, in a funny way.
There's been a lot of talk about how bad the reporting was, particularly with the George W. Bush Administration after 9/11. The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.
Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it.
The funny thing is, this is what everyone assumes, that anybody who talks has an axe to grind. I've been around a long time, and yes, there obviously are people who disagree with policy who talk to me, but it's less axes to grind than people who are really motivated. One of the terrible things about this Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news.