The West Wing Quotes

TOBY: What about illegal searches? What about profiling? Do you know what Benjamin Franklin said?

C.J. He said, “Hey, look, I’ve invented the stove.”

BILLY: He said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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Josh: If your neighbour's house is on fire you don't haggle over the price of the hose.

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Toby: Wanna play some pool?
CJ: I don't know how to play pool.
Toby: Then you wanna play for money?
CJ: Sure.

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Bruno: You people can find more ways to blow it...
Leo: We might be running out.

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Leo: Rollins likes us.
CJ: I don't know if he likes us but he doesn't hate us.
Leo: Well, that's just because he doesn't know us.

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Charlie: When did you start talking like Mickey Spillane?
Anthony: I don't know. Who's Officer Cupcake?

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CJ: Is it a good gym?
Donovan: We run alongside moving cars.

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Toby: It's not going to be a big deal.
Sam: Isn't that what we usually say right before something becomes a big deal?

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Leo: He's not gonna apologize.
Bruno: Why not?
Leo: Because it's his official campaign announcement and not Oprah Winfrey.

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Doug: I have a problem with the word torpor.
Sam: Why?
Doug: People don't know what it means.
Sam: It means apathy.
Toby: And dullness.
Connie: CJ, maybe you can help us.
Doug: But it's not a word that people know...
CJ: What's the word?
Doug: Torpor.
CJ: It means apathy.
Toby: And dullness.
Doug: But if people don't know what the word means...
Bartlet: Then they can look it up. We do not appeal to the lowest common denominator; we try to raise it - especially if you're going to be the Education President, you shouldn't hide that you've had an education.

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Leo: We've got to meet with Albie.
Bartlet: He's going to scold me. He's been at the State Department since Truman. He thinks I'm a kid and that he outranks me.
Leo: You'll be fine.
Bartlet: I've got to tell him I lost a submarine. Can I make something up like say 'what if a friend of mine hypothetically...'

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Toby: It's like when they did the thing with the SAT scores and I got dumber 20 years after I went to college.
Sam: It's a little like that.

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BARTLET: I don't like the word "stress". It's a Madison Avenue word. It's something that can be
cured with flavored coffee and bath bubbles.

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Bartlet: you know that line you're not supposed to cross with the president?
C.J: I'm coming up to it?
Bartlet: No, no look behind you

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Charlie : "Aren't you supposed to be writing?"
Toby : "I am writing."
Charlie : "I don't see paper."
Toby : "We can sit back and admit with great sensitivity that life isn't fair... and the less-advantaged are destined to their lot in life... and the problems of those on the other side of the world should stay there... Paper's for wimps."

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SAM: You told a joke.

BARTLET: She was the secretary to an Ambassador to France. I told her that I'd had dinner with
D'Astier at the Elysee Palace. She gently corrected me at that point calling it the
Palais de l'Elysee-- for that alone I wanted to sent for a parachute. And I made a
joke to D'Astier having to do with cheese and I said that D'Astier was visibly insulted
and that he was reconsidering my diplomatic status and she said, "Well, did he?"

SAM: She didn't get you were joking?

BARTLET: It didn't bode well for me.

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Mandy Hampton: You guys are idiots, did you know that?
C.J. Cregg: You know, in our defense, we actually did know that.

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Sam Seaborn: There's a town in Alabama...
Leo McGarry: They want to make the Ten Commandments into law. I heard.
Sam Seaborn: What do you think about that?
Leo McGarry: Coveting thy neighbor's wife is going to be a problem.
Sam Seaborn: Also, if I was arrested for coveting my neighbor's wife, I'd probably bear false witness.

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Mallory: Sam.
Sam: It's my day of jubilee.
Mallory: I despise you. And everything you stand for.
Sam: Okay, my day was a little better a few seconds ago, but that's all right.

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President Josiah Bartlet: I was watching a television program before, with a kind of roving moderator who spoke to a seated panel of young women who were having some sort of problem with their boyfriends - apparently, because the boyfriends had all slept with the girlfriends' mothers. And they brought the boyfriends out, and they fought, right there on television. Toby, tell me: these people don't vote, do they?

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Bartlet: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why?
Will Bailey: Because it's the only thing that ever has.

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Donna Moss: She should stick around. Your whole campaign is like some Dr. Seuss nightmare - One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, We Fought The Good Fight Fish.

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Toby Ziegler: It's not the new millennium, but I'll just let it drop.
Sam Seaborn: It is.
Toby Ziegler: It is not the new millennium. The year 2000 is the last year of the millennium, it's not the first year of the next one.
Sam Seaborn: But the common sensibility, towards Steven Jay Gould...
Toby Ziegler: Stephen Jay Gould needs to look at a calendar.
Sam Seaborn: Gould says this is a largely unresolvable issue.
Toby Ziegler: Yes, it's tough to resolve. You have to look at a calendar.

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Carol : "When a fire starts, it's not our policy to put it out?"
CJ : "That's something they shouldn't say. Put that in the memo with a big red circle and a line going through it."

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CJ : "There's no way you're letting me walk out the door."
Agent Donovan : "I've got your spark plug. Is that what you meant?"

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