The West Wing Quotes

Leo: One difference between the Mahatma and myself. I warn you there are others. You may browbeat me into using the breath spirometer. You may mother me about wound care. You may dole out the vicodin like my AA sponsor. You may even entertain me with nutrition lectures.
Nurse: You need to eat.
Leo: You may not --- may not --- offer fashion advice.

TV Show: The West Wing
Donna: I wasn't heroic. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

TV Show: The West Wing
Santos: 'Settle for less?' This is from the guys that are running Bob Russell for President?

TV Show: The West Wing
Hoynes: [to Josh] It's time to start leading. You're never going to be Leo McGarry to Jed Bartlet. But you can be Leo to me. I'm running for President. I want you with me. I want you to run my campaign.

TV Show: The West Wing
Bernard: Did you pick out that tie, or is it government-issue?
Charlie: My sister bought me this tie.
Bernard: The things we put up with for family.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: I'm going to need a converter for China, and I can't find my garment bag.
Donna: I think baggage claim is in the next terminal over.
Josh: You used to love it when I couldn't dress myself without you.
Donna: I used to love peppermint ice cream, too, but now those little pieces of candy, they get stuck in your teeth in a way that I find irritating.

TV Show: The West Wing
Leo: Ever see Arnie Vinick campaign? He'll go into those high school gymnasiums in Iowa and New Hampshire and blow them all away. He'll shake every hand in the joint, kiss every baby, hug every widow on Social Security and sound smarter and more honest than any Republican they've ever seen. Because he is.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: [about Arnie Vinick] Republican who wins California wipes us out in the Electoral College.... He's not getting the nomination.
Leo: If he does, we've got no one who can beat him.

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Will: [About Bob Russell] He's not stupid.
Josh: That's your bumper sticker?

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Will: You have to care who's going to sit in that chair after Jed Bartlet is gone.
Josh: I do. That's why I don't want Bob Russell to be President.

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Bartlet: [about to be carried downstairs] I'm just saying, you drop me, that's a moment that follows you the rest of your life.

TV Show: The West Wing
Margaret: There's someone here from NASA. He needs to speak to whoever's in charge, and at this point I have no idea who that is.
Leo: Maybe, keep the philosophical questions to yourself?

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Josh: What happened to the good old days when a couple of hacks with cigars chose the nominee in a smoked filled back room?
Leo: They didn't do so bad, did they?
Josh: We need a back room.

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Santos: Wow. Hi.
Josh: How ya doin'?
Santos: You lost?
Josh: Could be. Could be.
Santos: Come on in.
Josh: Um, sorry to bug you at home, but there wasn't time to wait for you to get back to Washington.
Santos: I'm there next week.
Josh: I'm on a bit of a deadline. It's a filing deadline.
Santos: Josh, Josh, Josh.
Helen: Matt?
Josh: It's a little crazy, I know.
Santos: I'm not running for Congress again, Josh. You came a long way and I'm sorry about that, but it's just...
Josh: I'm not talking about Congress.

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Bartlet: If I'd wanted to exercise, I'd have never become an economist.

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Bartlet: Is upholding the sanctity of marriage our job? I raised my right hand and swore an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Sen. Wilkinson: Where was your left hand, Mr. President?

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Toby: [to Josh, about leaving to run Santos' campaign] You can't leave. We're not done here.... You're going to walk into the Oval Office and tell the President you just found a better horse?

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Josh: What are you going to do when this is done?
Toby: Whatever I can to stave off the chaos, mayhem and self-interest that lies just beneath our civil disguise.
Josh: So, not the private sector?
Toby: The money would have to be unbelievable.

TV Show: The West Wing
Santos: I wanted to start this journey in the place where it all started for me. Soon, we will be inundated by the polls, the punditry, and prognostications, all the nonsense that goes with our national political campaigns. Well, none of that matters. This is the place that matters. Because everyday, children walk in to this schoolhouse to glimpse their futures, to ask for hope. They may not know they need it yet, but they do. And I'm here to tell you that hope is real. In a life of trials, in the world of challenges, hope is real. In a country where families go without health care, where some go without food, some don't even have a home to speak of, hope is real. In a time of global chaos and instability where our faiths collide, as often as our weapons, hope is real. Hope is what gives us the courage to take on our greatest challenges, to move forward together. We live in cynical times, I know that. But hope is not up for debate. There is such a thing as false science, there is such a thing as false promises, I am sure I will have my share of false starts. But there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope.

TV Show: The West Wing
Josh: [after Santos admits he only became a candidate to get a couple of months of media exposure for his education plan] I gave up everything for this! You aren't even in it to win?
Santos: Maybe we have a different definition of winning, Josh.

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Josh: You're not making it easy.
Santos: Well, you know if we're going to do this, I'm not going to make it easy.... I'm going to push every limit. And that's the campaign you get to run.
Josh: What if I can't make that work?
Santos: Well, then no one can.

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Josh: One idea is a big fund raising drive in the Latino community.
Santos: I don't feel comfortable with that right now.
Josh: Its a huge donor base you alone can tap.
Santos: Josh, I don't wanna just be the brown candidate, I want to be the American candidate.
Josh: How do you want to go broke? As the brown candidate or the American candidate?

TV Show: The West Wing
Santos: I want this to be a campaign of ideas... and these campaigns always wind up being about a candidate's high school transcripts.... You know, if we just took the money the campaign spent on personality contests and partisan side shows, we could solve this country's problems and shut down talk radio, all at the same time.

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Josh: New Hampshire is about retail politics. People here won't vote for you until you've had coffee in their house five times.

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Leo: We've been here seven trips around the sun. Done some things we're proud of, things we're less pleased about... It may be time for us to take our own temperature; an internal inventory... What's done. What's undone. What's done that we'd like to undo or do over.

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CJ: Overwhelming response to the State of the Union. Thirty-six interruptions for applause.
Bartlet: I don't know what's more embarrassing: that we count them or that I care.

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Kate: It’s not just that it’s futile. I mean, as long as Americans are willing to pay $60 a gram for cocaine some peasant farmer earning $60 a year is going to grow it. It’s just so geopolitically counter-productive. We turn their villages into war-zones, we destroy their land, we poison their families with herbicides, and then we’re surprised when they go vote for the socialists.

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Debbie: That wasn't very long.
Bartlet: I couldn't sleep.
Debbie: Couldn't or wouldn't?
Bartlet: I have three daughters and a wife; two of whom are also doctors. If you presume I don't get enough of that sort of comment, you're really not using your imagination.

TV Show: The West Wing
Vinick: I read about that education plan you introduced in New Hampshire. That's pretty gutsy stuff.
Santos: Saw the ethanol speech.
Vinick: Well, that wasn't gutsy so much as suicidal. Or so my staff tells me... My staff is very proud.
Santos: Well, if they weren't, I was.
Vinick: You're not an ethanol fan?
Santos: Not until today.

TV Show: The West Wing
Donna: Mr Johnson, your platform would include paying the President, the Cabinet and all members of Congress a salary of one dollar a year?
Mr. Johnson: Hell, yeah. Make 'em get a real job.
Donna: And you want to ban motorcycle helmets, color televisions, drop out of the UN, abolish Medicare and totally privatize Social Security?
Mr. Johnson: You gotta get the government out of our damn pockets.
Donna: Sir, are you sure you're a Democrat?

TV Show: The West Wing