Top 51 Briefing Quotes & Sayings

I can grow cameras!" she had shrieked at the Brill brothers during one briefing. "Who's to say that despicable centaur Foaly hasn't succeded in splicing surveillance equiptment to plants? So get rid of all the flowers. Rocks, too. I don't trust them. Sullen little blebers.

When I traveled as secretary of state, I was deluged with thick briefing books full of information about the politics, economy, and culture of each destination, so those took up most of my reading time.

As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room.

Every exchange between reporters and officials is important - that's why every State press briefing is put into the archives.

The thing that I try to remember is that in the briefing room it's not a debate. I'm not supposed to go in there and win a debate with the press corps. If that's what I try to do, then I'm going to lose.

Someday we'll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation.

The Ambassador and the General were briefing me on the....the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice.

We always get up about 5:30, and George gets up and goes in and gets the coffee and brings it to me, and that's been our ritual since we got married. And we read the newspapers in bed and drink coffee for about an hour probably, read our briefing papers.

If I were just to read briefing books or I were just to engage in the political back and forth, would I have heard what a big problem mental health is in New Hampshire? Would I have heard people say they're really worried about the impact on young people because New Hampshire has the highest tuition and debt problems in the country? i'm not sure I would have.

We're very powerful nuclear country. I've been briefed, I can tell you one thing about briefing that we're allowed to say, anybody that read the most basic book can say it, nuclear holocaust would be like no other.

As a Mark brand ambassador, I became extremely cognizant of the devastating statistics about dating abuse and partner violence via the mPowerment campaign and knew I wanted to help change those statistics. mPowerment by Mark and the Avon Foundation for Women funded the No More study, which explored dating abuse, partner violence, and sexual assault. I was honored to be part of it and report the results of the survey in a Capitol Hill briefing.

The White House press corps isn't there at a press briefing. It's not... They're not news gatherers there. There really isn't any media.

President Bush insisted that there was nothing in the August 6th, 2001 briefing, which was titled 'Bin Laden determined to attack the United States', that hinted what bin Laden was up to. Bush says that he would have moved mountains to stop the attack. Yeah, but he draws the line at reading a memo.

Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff. During a briefing military stuff in which officials began telling him about missile silos.

When I first experienced the millennial response to me, I had come out of a classified briefing, and I told the group of media individuals who were there that I didn't think James Comey had any credibility, and I threw up my hands and walked away - that went viral.

I was in the Justice Department for three years. I remember my entry briefing by the CIA. I can tell the date of it. I remember my exit interview from the CIA. And I remember that "C" in parentheses meant confidential.

The thing on cyber-security. Yes, it was - every government employee goes through this training. You do hear at corporations, as well. In addition, everybody that works at the State Department that has a clearance has to sign a document that says that they got a briefing on how to handle classified info. Hillary Clinton is the secretary of state. She makes a terrible, reckless decision, and it almost ruined her candidacy.

The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all.

I don't want to paint everybody with the same broad brush. But I do think that the majority of folks now in the briefing room, that are going into journalism - they're not there for the facts and the pursuit of the truth.

I've never seen a candidate - I've never seen a human being - who, with the most limited briefing, can understand the dimensions, the parameters, the nuances of everything of any kind of a policy or political problem.

I can learn a lot from reading briefing books and talking to experts, but that pales in comparison to what I can learn from going out and talking to people about what they're actually experiencing and hearing about their ideas.

Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing and rewriting and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.

We're not going to allow the briefing room to be a platform for propaganda.

I was given a White House - well, you will have to ask the White House that. But I asked to attend the White House briefing because I was, you know, because I wanted to report on the activities there.

The press briefing today I believe has lost much of its usefulness.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

These stories about my intellectual capacity really get under my skin. You know, for a while I even thought my staff believed it. There on my schedule first thing every morning it said, 'Intelligence Briefing.'

Things like 'I'm A Celebrity,' when they're going to a trial, they might reset the camera for a bit or give a briefing that's not on camera. But 'Big Brother,' you see everything.

I read a ton of paper every day. I read the newspapers, I read my intelligence materials, I read all the briefing materials. I read the newspaper in hard copy.

No, I can tell you one of the first things that happens to a home secretary when they arrive in the job is that they are given a briefing about the security matters that they will be dealing with and I deal with security matters on a daily basis.

My college life was brief because I started working for my debut film when I was in eleventh standard. But I have no regrets, as I stayed in touch with my friends who keep briefing me about the drama in the college. The opportunity to get into showbiz was so exciting that I couldn't let it pass by.

I'm a career Air Force officer. We have a saying in the Air Force: 'If you want people to be with you at the crash, you've got to put them on the manifest.' And so I was always of the view to almost leave no stone unturned when you're up there briefing the Hill.

I think there's something inherently interesting in the Monday morning quarterback: the guy who, you know, sits at one end of the briefing room and tells everyone what they should've done and how they've screwed up.

For all of us, self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.

Twitter's had a little fun with me because I say, 'I'm going to circle back. I'm going to circle back.' Now, I will say, and my very hardworking team can confirm, I'm obsessed with circling back with reporters, and not just saying it, but after the briefing getting back to them.

I did get a letter from the speaker of the House urging - enjoining me not to brief Secretary Clinton, and lots of cards and letters from people about not briefing Mr. Trump.

Certainly any president - Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative - should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

PM Modi believes in detailed planning through extensive consultation. He is an example as a listener - no interruptions, no urgent phone calls, no distractions; he absorbs every input. He doesn't hesitate to say he needs more inputs, another round of briefing, or more time to mull over.

If health and medical experts told me I should wear a mask while I was briefing, I would do it.

Frankly, returning the briefing is something that sends a message to the world that we're not afraid to engage. We're not afraid. We believe in the free press.

Well my briefing was that Honduras was a small and vulnerable country just back on the path towards democracy it was about to have just before I arrived, the first elections for a civilian president in more than 9 years.

I think aggressive, sometimes outspoken reporting from the White House briefing room is expected by the American people.

At the G-20 summit, the White House accidentally listed a phone-sex line for journalists seeking an on-record briefing call for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. To which Bill said, 'Boy, did they get the wrong number.'

Let's say I'm on the policy wonk end of the spectrum. As much as I can dive into a briefing book and really work to master various subjects that come before my desk, I'm still not an expert on a huge amount of the stuff that we work on.

George W. Bush attended the intelligence briefing every day. Obama has not even attended half of them. He sends surrogates. That to me is significant.

John Kerry told Tom Ridge he was too busy to receive a Homeland Security briefing. I thought that was odd, since you're not supposed to ignore terrorist threats until after you become president.

Jay Carney told the reporters at his morning briefing that he hoped they would watch the new movie about Obama's first term 'many times.' They might. Look how well 'Titanic' did at the box office.

Ever get the feeling that sometime early in your life there must have been a briefing that you missed?

I mean, Trump's Oval Office is like Grand Central Station. People try briefing him and someone comes in and interrupts him. People just sort of walk in without being previously announced in any meaningful way.

Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves - all plot and no characters, or made-up characters - Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.

Just because someone says something, whether it's at the podium during the briefing or the president tweets, I can't always assume that's factual. That's insane. We have to be very quick on our toes in fact checking.