The West Wing Quotes

Josh: Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extraterrestrials, is carrying photos of life on earth, greetings in fifty-five languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chant to Chuck Berry, including "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by 1920s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man. He died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down, but his music just left the solar system.

TV Show: The West Wing
Bartlet: Hans Bethe wrote, "If we fight a war and win it with H-Bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who brutally killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

TV Show: The West Wing
CJ: That was fun! Sanctimonious little guttersnipe sent a great big fat one up and over the plate. Health care reform! From a guy who's still on the fence about the application of leeches!

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: Eve Harrington in penny loafers here just corrected me in front of the President.
Donna: Were you wrong?
Josh: That's not the point.
Donna: What is the point?
Josh: I'm going into my office now.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: Taylor Reid was talking about your spin on the decline in manufacturing jobs and he said...
Toby: 'The tall lady's back to telling tall tales.'
CJ: The tall lady.... Carol, call 'The Taylor Reid Show' and book me on the next open slot. I'm going to reach down and rip off his puny, little face.

TV Show: The West Wing
Carol: Toby and Josh are in your office.
CJ: What do they want?
Carol: To make fun of you, I think.
CJ: And you let them in?
Carol: And made them coffee.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: Congressman Wendt, who single-handedly blocked our tax credit to expand child care to working families, is attempting to bind the feet of your entire gender with his paleo-chauvinist stay-at-home mom tax cut.
CJ: I'm going to read the bill and supporting materials.
Josh: What if you just kick up a cloud of dust about the revenue impact and mention that he's the Darth Vader of child care?

TV Show: The West Wing
Toby: [to Ed & Larry] This meeting's about politics. Facts won't help.

TV Show: The West Wing
CJ: What do I need to catch up on?
Toby: The President signed a school vouchers bill for D.C.
CJ: Are you kidding? I leave the building for an hour and he switches parties.

TV Show: The West Wing
Leo: Check with Margaret about the Mural Room.
Will: The Vice President has it.
Toby: For what?
Will: He's the Vice President, Toby. I don't have to justify his using a room.
Toby: Of course not. For what?

TV Show: The West Wing
Leo: I'm sorry but can we really justify spending $800,000 on 'A Bio-Cultural Approach to the Study of Female Sexual Fantasy and Genital Arousal'?
Toby: How can we afford not to?

TV Show: The West Wing
Abbey: Would you like me to do interviews with the Press Corps?
CJ: God, no. They're the most cynical bastards on the planet. You need to get beyond the Washington echo chamber and speak right to the people.

TV Show: The West Wing
Toby: This conversation would be a whole lot easier if I weren't fighting my way through a cloud of Obsession.
CJ: There's no cloud.
Toby: It's about to precipitate out. It's about to rain Obsession.

TV Show: The West Wing
Mark Hayden: You still smarting I had to carry your ass through Con Law?
Josh: You did not have to carry--
Mark Hayden: You thought strict scrutiny was a pickup technique.
Josh: Hey, it worked on Pam Sussman. I mean, not that well. How is your lovely wife?

TV Show: The West Wing
Abbey: So, what was it? The tube top to meet the Queen of England, or the low-rise jeans with the North Korean delegation?
CJ: Mrs. Bartlet, the press didn't know what to make of you before the MS became public. You've never been the traditional hat-knitting President's wife.
Abbey: Oh, shoot. Was that in the handbook? Maybe just get me a photographer and seven years' worth of yarn.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: Lang? Isn't she a lefty?
Leo: Yes. We want the left flank sufficiently mollified and the right flank sufficiently panicked so as to inspire a little conciliation on all flanks.

TV Show: The West Wing
Toby: If... If we were gonna try this. What would be the plan?
Josh: We give the President and Leo the name. We bring Christopher Mulready in. We bring Lang back in. Hopefully the two of them woo the pants off the President, and he agrees to the deal without noticing he's standing in the gaze of history, pantless.

TV Show: The West Wing
Debbie: I hate to do this, but it's Rina, sir. The girl in the dress with the flowers--
Bartlet: Just now?
Debbie: Yes.
Bartlet: What'd I call her?
Debbie: Lana.
Bartlet: Who's Lana?
Debbie: I'm guessing an exotic dancer from your spotty youth.

TV Show: The West Wing
Toby: Where's the Senator?
Josh: He's with CJ. He got me a little drunk.
Toby: Is he leaving?
Josh: I think he's getting CJ a little drunk.

TV Show: The West Wing
CJ: One of the hardest things to learn: There are so many true crises, so many lurking situations that could be dangerous for the President, its hard not to get caught up in the adrenaline and make everything lethal. It's more than picking your battles, marshaling your energy. It's about grace under fire. All war metaphors. I guess that's it; being able to tell when its a matter of life or death.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: Sir, have you read the talking points?
Bartlet: I'm an economist. Some would say half-decent. I don't need a primer on this.
Charlie: Due respect,sir, your answers on economics can be a bit---
Bartlet: Polysyllabic?
CJ: Academic.
Leo: I was going to go with incomprehensible.

TV Show: The West Wing
Bartlet: Anybody got any crayons so I can color in my Ph. D.?

TV Show: The West Wing
Ryan: Where you going?
Josh: To meet Congressman McKenna.
Ryan: That's funny, actually.
Josh: No, it isn't funny. He's a two-bit jerk of a House member. He holds us hostage every time we have a budget or a trade deal, or enough discretionary authority to buy an ice cream cone. I've got the Speaker of the House in ten minutes. I'm gonna smile, bob my head, and stick him in the outbox.
[The two walk into the Roosevelt Room together]
Josh: Beat it. I've got a meeting.
Ryan: So do I's the thing.
Josh: It's just me and McKenna.
Ryan: I'm his new Legislative Director. Hi. He figured it'd be leverage enough that he's on two authorizing committees and can stall half your budget priorities. Is this the part where you smile and bob your head?

TV Show: The West Wing
Leo: 'You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose'.... We run a country; we deal in abstractions.

TV Show: The West Wing
Ryan: Today's my last day at the White House.
Josh: Thank you.
Ryan: I was hoping you'd give a toast at my going-away party.
Josh: How about a plaque, for best impersonation of a blue blazer?
Ryan: So, you're coming to the party?
Josh: I'm having my own celebration with five cloves of garlic and the cast of The Exorcist.

TV Show: The West Wing
Debbie: [to Bartlet] For an Anglo Saxon, you were darn funny.

TV Show: The West Wing
Toby: He's a featherweight who only looks like a lightweight because he's got you propping him up.
Will: He's the heir apparent.
Toby: Don't say 'heir apparent' when we have men in moon suits hermetically sealing the Oval. This is Russell's only shot... A night like this.

TV Show: The West Wing
Leo: Believe me, I love the idea of you ministering to the wayward and unwashed. I don't love you becoming a de facto spokesperson for a load of issues we can't support.
Abbey: I'm not on a lecture tour, I'm seeing patients.
Leo: 'Hello. My name is Clarissa Ponsissa. I'm 14 and sexually active. But I know it's okay, 'cause I got my condoms from the First Lady.' Fox News is throwing a party.

TV Show: The West Wing
Fitzwallace What do photographers say in the digital age, now that the old 'Come up and see my darkroom' line has gone the way of the dodo?

TV Show: The West Wing
CJ: Say you're from Minnesota.
Toby: I'm from Minnesota.
CJ: No, we're pretending you're from there.
Toby: We're not actually.
CJ: And you'd like prescription drugs from Canada.
Toby: What do I have?
CJ: Not important.
Toby: It could be clouding my judgment.
CJ: You're no fun anymore.
Toby: I'm having fun.

TV Show: The West Wing