Top 35 Carl Bernstein Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I think all good reporting is the same thing – the best attainable version of the truth.”

— Carl Bernstein

2. “Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.”

— Carl Bernstein

3. “You can’t serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.”

— Carl Bernstein

4. “The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we, too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!”

— Carl Bernstein

5. “The people of the United States are entitled to assume that their President is telling the truth. The pattern of misrepresentation and half-truths that emerges from our investigation reveals a presidential policy cynically based on the premise that the truth itself is negotiable.”

— Carl Bernstein

6. “Always remember, others may hate you – but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

— Carl Bernstein

7. “The Congress is a dysfunctional institution; its broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.”

— Carl Bernstein

8. “For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.”

— Carl Bernstein

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9. “Marina del Rey, where Segretti lived, was on the water and, if you believed the ads, represented the ultimate in swinging-singles living. Lots of sailing, saunas, mixed-doubles tennis, pools, parties, candlelight, long-stemmed glasses, Caesar salads, tanned bodies, mixed double-triple-multiple kinkiness in scented sandalwood splendor.”

— Carl Bernstein

10. “The abiding characteristic of this administration is that it lies.”

— Carl Bernstein

11. “The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.”

— Carl Bernstein

12. “The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.”

— Carl Bernstein

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13. “Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.”

— Carl Bernstein

14. “The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.”

— Carl Bernstein

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

15. “The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.”

— Carl Bernstein

16. “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

17. “Basic strategy that goes all the way to the top. The phrase unnerved Bernstein. For the first time, he considered the possibility that the President of the United States was the head ratfucker.”

— Carl Bernstein

18. “So the White House wants to eat the Washington Post, so what? It will be wearing on you, but the end is in sight. It’s building and they see it and they know that they can’t stop the real story from coming out. That’s why they’re so desperate. Just be careful, yourselves and the paper, and wait them out, don’t jump too fast. Be careful and don’t be too anxious.”

— Carl Bernstein

19. “The White House had decided that the conduct of the press, not the conduct of the President’s men, was the issue.”

— Carl Bernstein

20. “Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.”

— Carl Bernstein

21. “Marilyn, I have a wife and family and a dog and a cat.”

— Carl Bernstein

22. “Religion is one of the fundaments of Hillary Clinton’s character and politics.”

— Carl Bernstein

23. “In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.”

— Carl Bernstein

24. “There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.”

— Carl Bernstein

25. “There’s something totally crazy about this.”

— Carl Bernstein

26. “All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees – famously in recent years at ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘The New York Times,’ and the three original TV networks.”

— Carl Bernstein

27. “Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes.”

— Carl Bernstein

28. “John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls – indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans.”

— Carl Bernstein

29. “The phone rang about five minutes later. Powell Moore wanted to know if the committee’s second statement had made the paper. Bernstein said it had, as well as Mitchell’s additional comments on the matter. Moore sounded worried. What had the Attorney General said? Bernstein read him the insert and told him it was already being set in type. “Oh,” said Moore.”

— Carl Bernstein

30. “Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”

— Carl Bernstein

31. “On evenings such as those, Deep Throat had talked about how politics had infiltrated every corner of government – a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House. Junior White House aides were giving orders on the highest levels of the bureaucracy. He had once called it the “switchblade mentality” – and had referred to the willingness of the President’s men to fight dirty and for keeps, regardless of what effect the slashing might have on the government and the nation.”

— Carl Bernstein

32. “Bernstein passed the reporters’ information about Segretti on to Meyers, who was staking out Segretti’s apartment and talking to his neighbors. Marina del Rey, where Segretti lived, was on the water and, if you believed the ads, represented the ultimate in swinging-singles living. Lots of sailing, saunas, mixed-doubles tennis, pools, parties, candlelight, long-stemmed glasses, Caesar salads, tanned bodies, mixed double-triple-multiple kinkiness in scented sandalwood splendor.”

— Carl Bernstein

33. “Elliot,” the President pleaded with him as the Attorney General entered, “Brezhnev wouldn’t understand if I didn’t fire Cox after all this.” Nixon urged Richardson to delay.”

— Carl Bernstein

34. “Sloan wondered if newspapers weren’t a little hypocritical, demanding one standard for others and another for themselves; he doubted that reporters had any idea of the anguish they could inflict with only one sentence.”

— Carl Bernstein

35. “Are you really able to blow it off?” Hillary was asked. “I blow most of it off. I get angry. I get confused about why people are doing what they do. I don’t get up every day thinking destructively about others. I don’t spend my hours plotting for somebody else’s downfall. My feeling is, gosh there’s more work that can be done, everybody ought to get out there and improve the health care system, and reform welfare and get guns out of the hands of teenagers.”

— Carl Bernstein

36. “Why have the Soviets stood aside and allowed us to settle Berlin, Vietnam and the Middle East? One, because the United States is big, mean and tough as hell and they know it. Two, the obsession with peace in the USSR. Twenty million Russian people were killed during World War II. We must have the fear elements working, but also the hope element.”

— Carl Bernstein

37. “Because the floor numbers were listed next to the names and phone extensions of committee personnel, it was possible to calculate roughly who worked in proximity to whom. And by transposing telephone extensions from the roster and listing them in sequence, it was even possible to determine who worked for whom.”

— Carl Bernstein

38. “That was the difference between him and Woodward. Woodward went into a garage to find a source who could tell him what Nixon’s men were up to. Bernstein walked in to find an eight-pound chain cut neatly in two and his bike gone.”

— Carl Bernstein