- Josh Lyman: I'm just sayin' if you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for a beer.
- Donna Moss: [stands up] If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights.
- Toby Ziegler: No, I don't think you did either, sir. I meant that during a night of extreme chaos and fear, when we didn't yet know if we'd been the victims of domestic or foreign terrorism, or even an act of war, there was uncertainty as to who was giving the national security orders and it was because you never signed a letter. So I'm led to wonder, given your condition and it's lack of predictability, why there isn't simply a signed letter sitting in a file someplace. And the answer, of course, is that if there was a signed letter sitting in a file someplace, somebody would ask why. The Commander-in-Chief had just been attacked, he was under a general anesthetic, a fugitive was at large, the manhunt included every federal, state, and local law enforcement agency. The Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware National Guard units were federalized. The KH-10s showed Republican Guard movement in southern Iraq. And twelve hours earlier, an F-117 was shot down in the no-fly, and the Vice President's authority was murky, at best! The National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State didn't know who they were taking their orders from! I wasn't in the Situation Room that night, but I'll bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets, that it was Leo, WHO NO ONE ELECTED. For ninety minutes that night there was a coup d'etat in this country.
- President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet: And the walls came tumbling down.
- Ainsley Hayes: Donna, who gave you those beautiful flowers at your desk?
- Josh Lyman: I did! Me. Those are from me.
- Ainsley Hayes: What's the occasion?
- Donna Moss: Nothing.
- Josh Lyman: Our anniversary.
- Donna Moss: Our *not* anniversary.
- Josh Lyman: Donna doesn't like to talk about it.
- Donna Moss: I really don't.
- Ainsley Hayes: Okay.
- Sam Seaborn: A few years ago Donna's boyfriend broke up with her so she started working for Josh but then the boyfriend told her to come back and she did and then they broke up and she came back to work...
- Donna Moss: [Donna gestures at Sam in exasperation]
- Sam Seaborn: I thought you meant YOU didn't want to talk about it. I'm a spokesman. It's in my blood.
- Toby Ziegler: It's never happened before, right?
- Leo McGarry: No.
- Toby Ziegler: The Vice President would never challenge a sitting President for the nomination.
- Leo McGarry: 'Course not.
- Toby Ziegler: You see his itinerary for the weekend?
- Leo McGarry: Who?
- Toby Ziegler: The Vice President.
- Leo McGarry: I don't keep tabs on John.
- Toby Ziegler: He's giving a speech at a semiconductor plant. The title of the speech is, "Clean Air Industry in the High-tech Corridor of the Industrial Northeast."
- Leo McGarry: Where?
- Toby Ziegler: Nashua... New Hampshire.
- Leo McGarry: Toby, nobody, and particularly not Hoynes would be naive enough... what I mean to say is if he's going to New Hampshire for the reason you're thinking he would mask it with something. It wouldn't be an official trip. He'd make up a benign excuse to be up there.
- Toby Ziegler: I know.
- Leo McGarry: So why worry?
- Toby Ziegler: Because it comes in the middle of a three-day camping trip to Killington.
- [pause]
- Toby Ziegler: Why does Hoynes think the President isn't going to run again? What's going on, Leo?
- Sam Seaborn: [speaking about the Equal Rights Amendment] How can you have an objection to something that says...
- Ainsley Hayes: Because it's humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man, I am mortified to discover there's reason to believe I wasn't before. I am a citizen of this country, I am not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old, white, men. The same Article 14 that protects you, protects me, and I went to law school just to make sure.
- President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet: [having divulged his medical condition to Toby] Are you pissed because I didn't tell you, or are you pissed because fifteen people knew before you did?
- Sam Seaborn: I flat-out guarantee you that if men were biologically responsible for procreation, there'd be paid family leave in every Fortune 500.
- Ainsley Hayes: Sam, if men were biologically responsible for procreation, they'd fall down and die at the first sonogram.
- Sam Seaborn: I'm going to register with the Republican Party. And I'll tell you why, if you're curious. It's because they're a freedom-loving people.
- Ainsley Hayes: We also like beef.
- Toby Ziegler: I have no kind of investigative mind. Zero. It took me six days and 23 minutes to figure it out.