The Post Quotes

[behind closed doors]
Ben Bradlee: So, can I ask you a hypothetical question?
Kay Graham: Oh, dear. I don't like hypothetical questions.
Ben Bradlee: Well, I don't think you're gonna like the real one, either.
[pause]
Kay Graham: Do you have the Papers?
[pause]
Ben

Bradlee: Not yet.

Ben Bagdikian: They're going to lock you up, Dan.
Daniel Ellsberg: Wouldn't you go to prison to stop this war?
Ben Bagdikian: Theoretically, sure.
Daniel Ellsberg: You are gonna publish these documents?
Ben Bagdikian: Yeah.
Daniel Ellsberg: Even with the

injunction.
Ben Bagdikian: Yes.
Daniel Ellsberg: Well, then. It's no so theoretical then, is it?

Tony Bradlee: But Kay. Kay is in a position she never thought she'd be in, a position I'm sure plenty of people don't think she should have. When you're told time and time again that you're not good enough, that your opinion doesn't matter as much. When they don't just look past you, when, to them, you're not even there, when that's been your reality for so long, it's hard not to

let yourself think it's true. So to make this decision, to risk her fortune and the company that's been her entire life, well, I think that's brave.

Robert McNamara: If you publish, you'll get the very worst of him, the Colsons and the Ehrlichmans and he'll crush you.
Kay Graham: I know, he's just awful, but I...
Robert McNamara: [Interrupting and getting extremely angry] He's a... Nixon's a son of a bitch! He hates you, he hates Ben, he's wanted to ruin the paper for years and

you will not get a second chance, Kay. The Richard Nixon I know will muster the full power of the presidency and if there's a way to destroy your paper, by God, he'll find it.

Roger Clark: What if we wait? What if we hold off on printing today. Instead we call the Attorney General and we tell them that we intend to print on Sunday. That way we give them and us time to figure out the legality of all of it, while the Court in New York decides the Times case.
Ben Bradlee: Are you suggesting we alert the Attorney General to the fact

that we have these documents, that we're going to print, in a few days?
Roger Clark: Well, yes, that is the idea.
Ben Bagdikian: Yeah, well, outside of landing the Hindenburg in a lightning storm, that's about the shittiest idea I've ever heard.
Fritz Beebe: Oh boy!

Ben Bradlee: Jack Kennedy. The night he was assassinated, Tony and I were down at the Naval Hospital so we would be there to meet Jackie when she landed. She was bringing Jack's body back on the plane from Dallas and she walked into the room. She was still wearing that pink suit, with Jack's blood all over it. She fell into Tony's arms and they held each other for quite a long

time. And then Jackie looked at me and said, "None of this. None of what you see. None of what I say, is *ever* going to be in your newspaper, Ben." And that just about broke my heart. I never - never thought of Jack as a source. I thought of him as a friend. And that was my mistake. And it was something that Jack knew all along. We can't be both. We have to choose. And - that's the point. The

days of us smoking cigars together on Pennsylvania Avenue were over.