Toby Ziegler quotes from The West Wing

Josh

You want to go to Orange County?

CJ

I think we have to go. [to Bartlet] Even though there's $1,300 with your name on it if you don't make me go with you.

Toby

Get over the dress, would you?

CJ

It was a suit, and they hit me with an avocado!

Toby

It could have been worse.

CJ

How?

Toby

They could have hit me.

Toby

Listen to me. We've got all kinds of atmospheric cabin pressure up here. We're a little late, so the Colonel's put the hammer down in a 747. You've got wind shear, downdraft, massive turbulence, not to mention four giant engines burning jet fuel at galactic temperatures. We're standing in a flying death tube! [people look up] No, not the rest of y-y-you, it's just my family. It's fine. Look...

What do you want me to do, step off?

Toby

Also, you've got twins in there; you're basically a minivan. How are you fitting into a seat?

Uh-uh... I saw him first, girls.

Sam

[in jail] How'd you call Josh? Didn't they take your cell phone from you?

Toby

[motioning to a group of prostitutes] I used theirs.

Sam

So on a call-girl's phone bill, there's gonna be a call to Air Force One?

Toby

You really gonna be teaching a seminar on call-girl caution? Really?

Toby

It made the news out there?

Will

A Jewish guy won a bar fight. It's news everywhere.

We don't make chemicals, Toby. We make ideas.

Toby

Uh huh. But what do you sell?

Chemicals.

Leo

By the way, not for nothing, but draftees aren't nearly as well trained. It's why there were so many casualties in Vietnam.

Toby

Right. Also, the Vietcong.

Leo

Plus that.

CJ

The substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.

Toby

I think what he's asking is why, on most other nights, do you think the world's going to hell in a hula hoop, but tonight...

CJ

We dip twice and eat gefilte fish?

Toby

Suzy Creamcheese, do not attempt the Haggadah.

CJ

I know how to bless the soup, too.

Toby

And they're sending in a team of lawyers to look into it?

Will

Yeah, but we're scrappy.

CJ

There's no website supporting it?

Toby

And you gotta ask yourself, if no one on the Internet wants a piece of this, just how far from the pack have you strayed?

Will

Two guys in the silo. The launch sequence went on for two minutes before they had confirmation it was a meteor. But the two guys were debating with Airborne Launch Control and the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center and that gets sticky. This is missile defense. This stuff has to work.

Toby

And they're sending in a team of lawyers to look into it.

Will

Yeah, but we're scrappy.

Toby

[laughs] A meteor fell from the sky the result being two guys are going to get court-martialed. The only two guys who apparently thought it was strange that North Korea would attack submarines in Connecticut instead of say, San Diego or Hawaii. And if it had been a real attack? Would they still have been doing point/counterpoint with NORAD?

Toby

We failed both on a mechanical and human level. So tell me again what you have faith in.

C.J.

Us.

Toby

Why?

C.J.

Because with what little free time he has, Will is going to Wyoming to defend one of these guys and I don't think it is failing on a human level.

Will

[from Leo's computer] Okay, I've searched "equinox" and "egg," and the news isn't good for the believers.

C.J.

What sites did they send you to?

Will

ThingsThatAreWrong.com.

C.J.

There's no such site.

Will

Read it!

C.J.

"This has to be one of the silliest misconceptions around and it never seems to die."

Will

They also send you to the Apocryphal Zone and Project Astro Utah.

C.J.

There are no web sites supporting it?

Toby

And you gotta ask yourself, if no one on the Internet wants a piece of this, just how far from the pack have you strayed?

Will

I came in to show you the spots and to tell you I think we should run a counter-ad. I don't have an idea for one.

Toby

Well get one! Have an idea! Don't come in here with half a thing and not be able to - you know, after you've walked me to the brink, and say 'we've got to do this, it's important, though I have no earthly idea how.' Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing, but doesn't really know how to get the most out of it!

Will

Toby, either get Andy to marry you, or kill yourself.

Toby

[pause] Yeah.

Charlie

Are you eating a salad?

Toby

Yeah.

Charlie

Why?

Toby

'Cause I am.

Charlie

I don't think I've ever seen you eat a salad. What kind of salad is it?

Toby

I don't know.

Charlie

Just mixed greens?

Toby

I don't know what kind of salad it is, I'm eating a salad, okay? I'm doing it, do I have to know the names? There's no difference between them, it's a bowl of weeds!

Toby

Some of them have cheese, this isn't the kind with cheese, does that answer your question?

Toby

How many years have you guys been 'Toby, you eat like a teenager.' 'Toby, that's red meat.' 'That's your second cigar.' Here I am, eating this salad, which, by the way, you could cover this thing in barbecue sauce and it still tastes like the ground, and I'm getting heckled from the gallery! Who wanted to come in here and eat his roast beef sandwich with ketchup on a kaiser roll and watch the damn tennis on my TV! That's all I'm saying.

Charlie

Man, Toby, you're really doing everything you can do to get that woman to marry you?

Josh

I think we made a mistake.

Donna

What?

Josh

Letting the President step aside.

Will

Have you been watching CNN, MSNBC? Even FOX is treating it as a seminar on the resiliency of the Constitution.

Josh

The President's daughter is probably tied up in the back of a gas station. We have no idea how this is playing.

Will

He showed he's a leader, nobly embracing his own flawed humanity.

Josh

Lincoln and Kennedy had children who died. They didn't take a sabbatical.

Toby

Who's been calling?

Josh

Congressional leadership.

Toby

Lincoln never got a ransom note from Jefferson Davis. He's putting country before family. I'd carpet bomb Mecca to get my kids back.

Josh

What if they like Walken better? What if he seems more presidential? What if they want Walken to stay?

Will

In a few days, President Bartlet turns the second letter over to Congress.

Josh

What if it doesn't take a few days? What if it takes a few weeks, a few months? What if she's never found?

Will

Diane Frost is a serious name.

Josh

Diane is a serious loon of the left.

Toby

I love Diane Frost. I'd marry Diane Frost if I were a member of her stated sexual preference, but Diane is the definition of unelectable.