John Harwood Quotes

If you are a reliable, honest journalist, sources will open up and trust you and share good information.

I want my clients to trust me.

I don't keep secrets because I'm no good at them!

When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the President and unable to comment. But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

My comments are reserved for reputable journalists.

Things said to a reporter in confidence should be kept in confidence.

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.

Resolved, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honor, and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shall have been determined, without leave of the Congress; nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret. And that if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such …

Even if you had the wherewithal to embarrass a reporter, there was no mechanism to do it. And in most cases, you might as well save your breath because the reporter had no shame anyway.

I have not broken any promises, but I have full freedom to say or write about what others have said to me during my tenure in the PMO.

I'm not exposing anything thats private - that's one thing I won't do.

People may not have the right to know about your personal, private life or any detail about any potentially embarrassing photo, but they do have the right to know whether you are honest, candid and forthcoming.

We try and be as open as we can, and to protect the secrets that we must protect.

When you're building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can't have two sets of information for two sets of people.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source.

I'm a pretty bad liar, and I'm not very good at keeping secrets.

Being honest with the public is how they respect you.

I refuse to say things behind people's backs.

It is my conviction that secrets are more costly in the long run than honesty.

Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.

The ethics of journalism are one thing. Another thing is the ethics of business.

I would not say that secret-keeping is one of my finer skills, actually.