The Final Days Quotes

“You’ve just had an order from your Commander in Chief,” Haig said. Watts could not resign. “Fuck you, Al,” Watts said. “I just did.” Kissinger called his staff together in the Executive Office Building to plead for their support of the decision. “We are all the President’s men,” he said, “and we’ve got to behave that way.”
― Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

“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, The Final Days

“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, The Final Days

“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, The Final Days

“their hearts in it. It was well”
― Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

“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, The Final Days

“By late October, after Cox had been fired, Kissinger’s anxieties about the President had become more acute. “Sometimes I get worried,” he said. “The President is like a madman.” Kissinger was deeply pessimistic. He had looked to the second Nixon administration as a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a new American foreign policy, to achieve new international structures based on unquestioned American strength, détente with the Soviets and China, a closer bond with Europe. It seemed no longer possible. Watergate was shattering the illusion of American strength, he said, and with it American foreign policy.”
― Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

“Buzhardt was not sure, but he would check. He discerned that the President was extremely concerned about the gap, but there was something evasive in Nixon’s approach, something disturbing about his reaction. To Buzhardt, he seemed to be suggesting alternative explanations for the lawyer’s benefit, speculating on various excuses as if to say, “Well, couldn’t we go with one of those versions?” Buzhardt prided himself on being able to tell when the President was lying. Usually it wasn’t difficult. Nixon was perhaps the most transparent liar he had ever met. Almost invariably when the President lied, he would repeat himself, sometimes as often as three times—as if he were trying to convince himself. But this time Buzhardt couldn’t tell. One moment he thought Nixon was responsible, at another he suspected Woods. Maybe both of them had done it. One thing seemed fairly certain: it was no accident.”
― Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

“The important thing is the presidency," Nixon continued. "If need be, save the presidency from the President.”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days

“Who is the arbiter of the Constitution?

"Now, the President may be right in how he reads the Constitution," Jaworski said. "But he may also be wrong. And if he is wrong, who is there to tell him so? And if there is no one, The President, of course, is free to pursue his course of erroneous interpretation. What then becomes of our constitutional form of government? ... That nation's constitutional form of government is in serious jeopardy if the President, any President, is to say that the Constitution means what he says it does and that there is no one, not even the Supremer Court, to tell him otherwise.”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days

“Richardson, writing on a legal pad, paraphrased the thought: “If the monster is me, save the country.”
― Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, The Final Days

“It was nearly midnight when the conversation finally stopped on its own weight. The question was unresolved, at least in any explicit way.”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days

“With the release of the transcripts Nixon had allowed America into the ugliness of his mind - as of he wanted the world to participate in the despoliation of the myth of presidential behavior. The transcripts, Garment thought, were an invasion of the public's privacy, of its right not to know. That was the truly impeachable offense: letting everyone see.”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days

“The White House argument would be strong. Ziegler and St. Clair would pound away at the ghastly spectacle of a President on trial in a courtroom. There seemed to be some reasonableness to the position they would probably take. What would the President do if someone started a nuclear war - ask for a recess?”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days

“One of Nixon's speechwriters "never deluded himself about Nixon's darker instincts, his paranoia, the capacity for hatred, the need for revenge, the will to crush anyone he perceived as an enemy.”
― Bob Woodward, The Final Days