"Because what I think it's about is you, once again letting the character cops win in a forfeit because you don't have the guts or the strength or the courage to say, 'we know what's right from wrong and it's none of your damn business.'" [1.3]
"I'll tell you what, let's forget about the fact that you're coming a little late to the party and embrace the idea that you showed up at all." [1.6]
"Is it possible for Peter Lillienfield to be a bigger jackass? Do you think if he tried hard, there's room for him to be a slightly bigger horse's ass?" [1.9]
"I wasn't calling you a fool, sir, the brand new state of Georgia was." [1.9]
"It's not just about abortion, it's about the next 20 years. Twenties and Thirties it was the role of government, Fifties and Sixties it was civil rights. The next two decades it's gonna be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on the right to be free, what could be more fundamental than that?" [1.9]
"Your job isn't to end the fight, it's to win it. Now you can work for us or you can work for them, but you can't do both." [1.11]
"There are times when we are absolutely nowhere." [1.14]
"I'm using celestial navigation." [1.15]
"Your teeth are the best friends you've got, CJ." [1.15]
"No, honestly, I am dumb. Most of the time I'm playing smart." [1.18]
"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet." [1.18]
"Why does being gay mean you can't keep your hands to yourself? And with what kind of gentlemanly pride are the armed forces willing to lay claim to restraint in that area? You want me to go get the file on sexual harassment at the DoD? You want me to ask these guys about Tailhook?" [1.19]
"I didn't want you to feel beholden to me. Like an episode of 'I Dream of Jeannie' where now you have to save my life or the time-space continuum -- or you follow me around with coconut oil and hot towels." [2.2]
"It's an inability to perform arithmatic functions. I'm sorry, Mr. President. You wanted to answer your own question, didn't you?" [2.3]
"That's my office over there and the president works in that round room over there and nobody else really matters." [2.3]
"A young, blonde, leggy Republican -- I thought it turned out they didn't know anything." [2.4]
"Why participate in the process when you can get a job commenting on it?" [2.4]
"They bought the guns, they loaded them, they drove from Wheeland to Rosslyn, and until they pulled the trigger they had yet to commit a crime. I am so off the charts sick of the gun lobby tossing around words like 'personal freedom' and nobody calling them on it. It's not about personal freedom and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with public safety; it's just that some people like guns." [2.4]
"I think we have no chance with the new Congress. And while I've never lived through a massive nuclear explosion of radiation decimating all forms of life in a 200 mile radius, I've seen pictures. And I couldn't agree with Josh more on his interpretation of the extraordinary circumstances clause in the Constitution." [2.6]
"I think you'll discover that the sharpest of closing remarks will be blunted by asking for a muffin." [2.5]
"Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. We should be talking about not being satisfied with past solutions. We should be talking about a permanent revolutions." [2.7]
"You think a Communist never wrote an elegant phrase? How do you think they got everybody to be Communists?" [2.7]
"Eleven months ago, a 1200-pound spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Eighteen hours ago, it landed on the planet Mars. You, me, and sixty thousand of your fellow students across the country, along with astroscientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California, NASA Houston, and right here at the White House, are going to be the first to see what it sees, and to chart the extraordinary voyage of an unmanned ship called Galileo V." [2.9]
"'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next." [2.9]
"You and the President may think they deserved it, but the cynicism of attacking your friends for political protection offends them. And it offends me." [2.12]
"Somebody wake me up from this, because I think you just deputized Joe McCarthy into this conversation." [2.16]
"It was high treason, and it mattered a great deal. This country is an idea, and one that's lit the world for two centuries, and treason against that idea is not just a crime against the living! This ground holds the graves of people who died for it, who gave what Lincoln called the 'last full measure of devotion, of fidelity.' Do you understand, the last full measure of devotion to... treason against them is..." [2.16]
"Let me tell you people something, the GAO needs a little housekeeping and that's my nickname, okay. I'm the Housekeeper." [2.17]
"'Shall not be abridged or denied on account of sex.' Very dangerous language. This must be stopped. What could possibly be your problem with the ERA?" [2.18]
"You know, you insist government is depraved for not legislating against what we can see on newsstands, or what we can see in an art exhibit, or what we can burn in protest, or which sex we can have sex with, or a woman's right to choose, but don't you dare try to regulate this deadly weapon I have concealed on me, for that would encroach against my freedom." [2.18]
"Never has a war been so courteously declared. It was parchment, with calligraphy, and 'Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philly to bite me.'" [3.0]
"If you want to substitute testosterone for foreign policy, then why not have the President wade out into the crowd and challenge him to an arm wrestle!" [3.2]
"New Hampshire: Live free or cheap." [3.2]
"I'm not sure you can say 'energetic energy.'" [3.11]
"I think giving people a vision of government that's more than Social Security checks and debt reduction is good. I think government should be optimistic." [3.11]
"I win, you lose, 'twas ever thus." [3.16]
"Don't get me wrong, this President can do three shows a night, but there's no one in the Western hemisphere who has a worse reaction to jetlag than he does. Any trip eight hours or longer and someone gets fired at the end of it, and it's already been me three times." [3.19]
"I got a letter last year asking me if I would donate my brain to a medical school in Grenada. I'll tell you, there are days when I think, Yeah, why not just get it over with?" [3.19]
"I don't like eating things where the cartoon character can talk and, you know, hatch plans." [3.20]
"The First Lady's not a lesbian, is she?" [4.2]
"Maybe he'd enjoy sitting and watching me work. I could narrate what I was doing for him. 'Right now, I'm reading background intelligence on Central America as it relates, believe it or not, to textile imports.' Oooh, intelligence--.007! See, and right away I've got him going with .007!" [4.2]
"I love Josh like a brother and he's a world-class political mind, but until today, I had no idea he was smarter than I was." [4.2]
"Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright." [4.2]
"Why do 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean the same thing?" [4.3]
"I mean, you've gotta ask yourself: multi-million dollar bonuses are deductible and not tuition?" [4.3]
"I don't want to show it to Toby yet. Would you mind reading it for me and then hitting me in the head with a fairway wood?" [4.4]
"Good. 'Cause you know why? 'Cause hubris always wins in the end. The Greeks taught us that." [4.5]
"Listen, if you can't find a Democrat, tell Mrs. Wilde--Tell Katie that I'll do it." [4.6]
"Because the alternative is taking 90 days off to go home, lose by 20 points to a Republican committee chair I hate, and never be able to run for public office for real, which is something I maybe wouldn't mind doing one day." [4.6]
"The Midwest. The RNC exits. A dead candidate. A rainstorm. It's Aristotle all over the place." [4.8]
"Can I ask: Is your office now the House of the Rising Sun?" [4.8]
"I'd say to hell with the election. There's a guy in St. Louis making 55,000 a year trying to send his kid to Notre Dame." [4.16]
"If I'm gonna lose, I'd like to lose doing something." [4.16]