Top 200 Bob Woodward Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Don’t lecture Trump. He doesn’t like professors. He doesn’t like intellectuals. Trump was a guy who “never went to class. Never got the syllabus. Never took a note. Never went to a lecture. The night before the final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that’s good enough. He’s going to be a billionaire.”

— Bob Woodward

102. “Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel.”

— Bob Woodward

103. “Trump lashed out, suggesting that McCain had taken the coward’s way out of Vietnam as a prisoner of war. He said that as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War McCain, whose father was Admiral John McCain, the Pacific commander, had been offered and taken early release, leaving other POWs behind. “No, Mr. President,” Mattis said quickly, “I think you’ve got it reversed.” McCain had turned down early release and been brutally tortured and held five years in the Hanoi Hilton. “Oh, okay,” Trump said.”

— Bob Woodward

104. “When you practice reporting for as long as I have, you keep yourself at a distance from True Believers. Either conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans.”

— Bob Woodward

105. “The legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get in trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.”

— Bob Woodward

106. “To have Trump answer them, of course, would be a catastrophe because Trump could erupt and say absolutely anything.”

— Bob Woodward

107. “I think there are people out there who just kind of say, let’s repot the plant. Let’s give somebody else a chance. And it’s not just anger or disappointment in their lives, it’s the sense of, let’s shake this up. And no one is shaking it up as much as Trump.”

— Bob Woodward

108. “I would recommend you run as if you are running for governor in three states – Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. There were the first three caucus or primary states. “Run and sound local, like you want to be their governor.” A lot of candidates make the huge mistake of trying to run in 27 states. “Run three governor’s races, and you’ll have a really good shot. Focus on three. Do well in three. And the others will come.”

— Bob Woodward

109. “Trump had gone bankrupt six times and seemed not to mind. Bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Real.”

— Bob Woodward

110. “Dowd was aware that he had illustrated the president was “clearly disabled.”

— Bob Woodward

111. “Let that analysis sink in: Twenty percent of the president’s staff think they are “saving the world” from the president.”

— Bob Woodward

112. “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

113. “Caught by surprise, Kelly had gone dark for several hours. He’d had to call his wife and explain that he had no choice but to accept after being offered one of the most important jobs in the world via tweet.”

— Bob Woodward

114. “He’s a professional liar.”

— Bob Woodward

115. “You need to remember we’re a nuclear power. As powerful as you. You Americans think you won the Cold War. You did not win the Cold War. We never fought that war. We could have, but we didn’t.’ And that put chills up my spine.”

— Bob Woodward

116. “Having failed in efforts to control or curtail the president’s tweeting, Priebus searched for a way to have practical impact. Since the tweets were often triggered by the president’s obsessive TV watching, he looked for ways to shut off the television. But television was Trump’s default activity. Sunday nights were often the worst. Trump would come back to the White House from the weekend at one of his golf resorts just in time to catch political talk on his enemy networks, MSNBC and CNN.”

— Bob Woodward

117. “Everybody’s trying to get me,” the president said.”

— Bob Woodward

118. “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner.”

— Bob Woodward

119. “Recusing himself made the attorney general a “traitor,” Trump said to Porter. The president made fun of his Southern accent. “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner.”

— Bob Woodward

120. “All presidencies are audience driven, but Trump’s central audience was often himself.”

— Bob Woodward

121. “If you interviewed 1,000 politicians and asked about whether the media’s too soft or too hard, about 999 would say too hard.”

— Bob Woodward

122. “Do you want this job?” the president asked McMaster. “Yes, sir.” “You got it,” Trump said and shook McMaster’s hand. “Get the media. Get the cameras in here.” He wanted a picture with his latest general who looked out of Central Casting.”

— Bob Woodward

123. “Finally, the president added, ‘The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...”

— Bob Woodward

124. “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

125. “As an extreme measure, Hicks, Porter, Gary Cohn and White House social media director Dan Scavino proposed they set up a committee. They would draft some tweets that they believed Trump would like. If the president had an idea for a tweet, he could write it down or get one of them in and they would vet it. Was it factually accurate? Was it spelled correctly? Did it make sense?”

— Bob Woodward

126. “Cohn had witnessed this for over a year – denial when needed or useful or more convenient. “He’s a professional liar,” Cohn told an associate.”

— Bob Woodward

127. “Cohn realized again what he had said before to others about the president: “He’s a professional liar.”

— Bob Woodward

128. “Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO. Mattis, with agreement from Dunford, began saying that Russia was an existential threat to the United States.”

— Bob Woodward

129. “Nixon’s grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving, and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country, he would have escaped.”

— Bob Woodward

130. “Tillerson said, and the floodgates gushed open. “The president can’t make a decision. He doesn’t know how to make a decision.”

— Bob Woodward

131. “He’s 71. He’s not going to admit he’s wrong, ever.”

— Bob Woodward

132. “The Justice Department Inspector General was investigating Comey’s actions in the Clinton email case.”

— Bob Woodward

133. “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like – and had the understanding of – “a fifth or sixth grader.”

— Bob Woodward

134. “You show by where you go and by the use of your time what’s most important.”

— Bob Woodward

135. “Cohn concluded that Trump was, in fact, going backwards. He had been more manageable the first months when he was a novice.”

— Bob Woodward

136. “Priebus called the presidential bedroom “the devil’s workshop” and the early mornings and dangerous Sunday nights “the witching hour.”

— Bob Woodward

137. “Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.”

— Bob Woodward

138. “The Fox News network, especially opinion broadcaster Sean Hannity, had a Svengali-like influence on Trump that Rosenstein privately labeled “malicious.” Too many right-wing nuts had influence. He also found no comfort or credibility with mainstream media reporters, who he believed were prisoners of their partisan sources.”

— Bob Woodward

139. “Clinton feels a profound alienation from the Washington culture here, and I happen to agree with him.”

— Bob Woodward

140. “Ailes said they were there for their weekly debate prep. The first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton was a month and a half away, on September 26. “Debate prep?” Bannon said. “You, Christie and Rudy?” “This is the second one.” “He’s actually prepping for the debates?” Bannon said, suddenly impressed. “No, he comes and plays golf and we just talk about the campaign and stuff like that. But we’re trying to get him in the habit.”

— Bob Woodward

141. “Trump said, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He had just met with the prime minister of Norway. Why not more Norwegians?”

— Bob Woodward

142. “Haitians,” Trump said. “We don’t need more Haitians.”

— Bob Woodward

143. “One day in the Oval Office, Cohn brought in the latest job numbers to Trump and Pence. “I have the most perfect job numbers you’re ever going to see,” Cohn said. “It’s all because of my tariffs,” Trump said. “They’re working.” Trump had yet to impose any tariffs, but he believed they were a good idea and knew Cohn disagreed with him.”

— Bob Woodward

144. “Later, when Trump brought up the second speech to him, the staff secretary said, “I thought the second speech was the only good one of the three.” “I don’t want to talk to you,” Trump responded. “Get away from me.”

— Bob Woodward

145. “It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system.”

— Bob Woodward

146. “The individual income tax rates were pegged at 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35 and the top rate, 37 percent. The drop from 39.6 percent was standard Republican tax cutting. In the end, the law would add an estimated $1.5 trillion to the annual deficit over 10 years.”

— Bob Woodward

147. “Mattis had a general operating philosophy which he articulated many times over the years: “You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can control your response.”

— Bob Woodward

148. “Former General John Kelly had stood in the Trump Tower lobby as Trump took questions with a grim look on his face. Colbert said, “This guy is a four-star general. Iraq, no problem. Afghanistan, we can do it. Twenty-minute Trump press conference? A quagmire.”

— Bob Woodward

149. “I have written things that Republicans and Democrats and all kinds of figures have either hated or felt very uncomfortable about. Because in doing these long projects and books, you get close to the bone. And they’re not calling me up and asking me for dinner.”

— Bob Woodward

150. “When you hear in the tape recordings Nixon’s own voice saying, We have to stonewall, We have to lie to the Grand Jury, We have to pay burglars a million dollars, it’s all too clear the horror of what went on.”

— Bob Woodward