Chris Matthews Quotes & Sayings

#1. Public opinion aside, it will be up to the future pope to continue John Paul II's journey to sainthood. Many of the late pope's followers believe he is already there.

Chris Matthews

#2. Toastmasters changed my life. They really did. Put me on the stage.
I don't know what I would have done without that positive boost.

Chris Matthews

#3. He'd made a name for himself out there in the world beyond not just in spite of the distinctly unfashionable persona he presented, but, perhaps, BECAUSE of it.

Chris Matthews

#4. The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.

Chris Matthews

#5. [Hillary] Clinton was able to assemble a winning Democratic coalition out here, beating Sanders among African-Americans, women, among women, and voters from union households, so, unions, women, African-Americans.

Chris Matthews

#6. It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.

Chris Matthews

#7. They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.'

Chris Matthews

#8. The reason I had unfaithfulness in one of my marriages is because I was too patriotic.

Chris Matthews

#9. I had the good fortune of living in Rome for seven years, from 1994 to 2001. So, I kind of saw firsthand the impact that Pope John Paul II had on people.

Chris Matthews

#10. The big lie is that the people who make a lot of money were the only ones that worked hard.

Chris Matthews

#11. I wonder ... if the Republican Party really wants to be branded right now as the party of tax cuts and torture? I mean that's what they're selling.

Chris Matthews

#12. In politics there is a large difference between loosing and being defeated.

Chris Matthews

#13. Even if you're not a Catholic, even if you're not a Christian, in fact even if you have no religious faith at all, what people could see in Pope John Paul was a man of true and profound spiritual faith.

Chris Matthews

#14. The pope has been called many things, historic figure, spiritual leader, moral force. But a growing chorus of voices has begun to refer to him as John Paul II the Great, in other words, as a saint.

Chris Matthews

#15. Medicare, getting through that in the '60s, after Kennedy's assassination, where there was such an emotional desire to do something to carry on his agenda.

Chris Matthews

#16. Even the bureaucracy does not shatter the stillness.

Chris Matthews

#17. Pope John Paul II is the great. Only two other popes had that title. Does that suggest there is going to be a move for canonization?

Chris Matthews

#18. I think a lot it was the theology, that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad, that somehow if we broke apart the rejectionist states, like Iraq, then the whole Middle East would reconfigure itself into a more favorable environment for democracy and Israel and us.

Chris Matthews

#19. We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.

Chris Matthews

#20. It's not such a bad idea, at any time, to be seen as FIGHTING, especially when you might just win.

Chris Matthews

#21. People - Hollywood doesn't talk about how bad cigarette smells when it smells like they wake up in bed with somebody who has been smoking the night before.

Chris Matthews

#22. I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now.

Chris Matthews

#23. The Russian people were just like us. They were victims of their own government. Ronald Reagan

Chris Matthews

#24. My priority is to see that some people don't suffer for the good of others.

Chris Matthews

#25. That is the voice of God because its the voice of truth and experience.

Chris Matthews

#26. In politics, nothing good ever comes from the unexpected.

Chris Matthews

#27. I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

Chris Matthews

#28. The Catholic Church [with Pope John Paul II] has lost its shepherd. The world has lost a champion of human freedom.

Chris Matthews

#29. I'm so glad we had that storm last week.

Chris Matthews

#30. When I hear Rand Paul, who is much younger, saying wars are verkakte, I agree with him.

Chris Matthews

#31. You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.

Chris Matthews

#32. Are Democrats for expanding U.S. trade with the world and perhaps creating new jobs, or are they out to protect existing U.S. jobs?

Chris Matthews

#33. The holy father John Paul II made a profound impact wherever he went. And, of course, his trip to Boston was one of the earliest ones. But I must say every time that I met the holy father and mentioned Boston, he would immediately say, rain. So, it made quite an impact on him, too.

Chris Matthews

#34. People do have a - people, unlike politicians, are allowed to change their minds. People are allowed to look back and say, you know what, all things considered, I don't think that was the smart move.

Chris Matthews

#35. I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'

Chris Matthews

#36. I used to love hand raising.

Chris Matthews

#37. In life, as in death, Pope John Paul II was one of the most visible people on Earth.

Chris Matthews

#38. I never wrote off [Donald] Trump.

Chris Matthews

#39. This looking down our noses at tea party people has got to stop,

Chris Matthews

#40. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.

Chris Matthews

#41. John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom.

Chris Matthews

#42. Isn't Hollywood - and I love movies - a lot of it about a big lie?

Chris Matthews

#43. Isn't it odd that the guy was politically correct in one particularly weird way. Bill Clinton never lit a cigar.

Chris Matthews

#44. I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

Chris Matthews

#45. For Reagan,for his contemporaries, and many in the generations after them, the word Munich was understood as code for any nation's stepping back from necessary toughness

Chris Matthews

#46. I think, internally, we Catholics have known this for a long time. I think we're just thrilled and grateful that the rest of the world now is sharing in the esteem and gratitude that we've had for Pope John Paul II for 26 and a half years.

Chris Matthews

#47. Historically, the coupling of president and Speaker has been a tricky one that encourages a choreography both quick-footed and wary

Chris Matthews

#48. We in America count on the profit motive to get people to do the right thing. That's our basic American notion when it comes to business.

Chris Matthews

#49. The last person to be beatified by Pope John Paul II was Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 2003.

Chris Matthews

#50. All the 'too close to call' announcements are not due to incompetence ... It's caution.

Chris Matthews

#51. What happens to conservatives when they get near the White House? How come they only seem to be talking the good talk at, say, the Senate level, when they don't have to run the show?

Chris Matthews

#52. Those who saw Pope John Paul II either in person or through the mass media glimpsed a man who millions of Catholics believe may be one of the greatest popes in the history of the church.

Chris Matthews

#53. Bill Clinton was for NAFTA. I heard him over in Tokyo he came out all said it was a great bill. Secretary Clinton was for it. She called it the gold standard when she was secretary of state.

Chris Matthews

#54. Sarah Palin is an empty vessel ready to be filled by ideology that she doesn't even understand, and that is really scary. Nothing is more frightening than an empty vessel in power.

Chris Matthews

#55. America's the one country in the world where anybody who comes here does better than where they came from.

Chris Matthews

#56. I still think a reasonable question is, would we be better off with [Muamar] Gadhafi and Bashar al-Assad still in there and Mubarak still there and Saddam [Hussein] there than the crap we have got looking at us now?

Chris Matthews

#57. If you want to play a game, go to where it's played and find a way to get in. Things happen when you get in the game.

Chris Matthews

#58. I can't find a reason to be for this war. I've looked, and I can't, so I'm not.

Chris Matthews

#59. It was like an aphrodisiac. Actors would say let's have another cigarette on that great scenes, and they'd blow smoke in each other's face.

Chris Matthews

#60. I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

Chris Matthews

#61. He was making the inevitable pivot from critic to manager.

Chris Matthews

#62. Over the last 2,000 years, 10,000 saints have been named, among them, 78 popes. At the time of his death, Pope John Paul II had the distinction of naming 482 saints, more than all of his predecessors combined.

Chris Matthews

#63. on-air appearance you could see that the secretary of state

Chris Matthews

#64. I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'

Chris Matthews

#65. We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.

Chris Matthews

#66. Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.

Chris Matthews

#67. Everything he's done is clean as a whistle. He's never not only broken any law, he's never done anything wrong.

Chris Matthews

#68. We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

Chris Matthews

#69. President [Barack]Obama benefits from the shared experience and wisdom of top national security and foreign policy advisers, many of them career professionals.

Chris Matthews

#70. The President [Barack Obama] said if we get out of this business of trade expansion, we turn it over to the Chinese. This brings us into partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim countries.

Chris Matthews

#71. [Barack] Obama believes you can hold enemy combatants, unlawful enemy combatants at Gitmo without a criminal trial because this is law of war detention.

Chris Matthews

#72. Every party and every movement tends to need a hero.

Chris Matthews

#73. The more failure you can accept, the greater your chance of success.

Chris Matthews

#74. His [John Paul II] humanity, combined with his extraordinary spiritual authority, was unlike anything I've ever met.

Chris Matthews

#75. Around the globe, millions more are mourning the death and celebrating the life of Pope John Paul II . Could any other world leader have drawn so many people to one place?

Chris Matthews

#76. Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people.

Chris Matthews

#77. I think also people in states like Pennsylvania know that a lot of money and effort and time needs to be spent on knitting America back together, on the bridges and the roads and the infrastructure and the education.

Chris Matthews

#78. Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?

Chris Matthews

#79. I love what Joe Eszterhas written about Bill Clinton. It's hilarious, Clinton as a rock star, which is the way we should remember him.

Chris Matthews

#80. And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.

Chris Matthews

#81. O'Neill was perceptive enough to understand the country had a new leader that it wanted to believe in. After the tragedy of Dallas, after the quicksand of Vietnam, the scandal of Watergate, and the "malaise" of Jimmy Carter, it needed one.

Chris Matthews

#82. The whole reason we organize grassroots is, we think any politician that gets elected needs to be held accountable 365 days a year.

Chris Matthews

#83. He's a beautiful man, but I'm sorry he doesn't agree with my political philosophy

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

Chris Matthews

#84. The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.

Chris Matthews

#85. I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.

Chris Matthews

#86. He was experienced enough to spot the downside of doing the right thing.

Chris Matthews

#87. Tip, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I would give mine away and go to hell with you.

Ronald Reagan

Chris Matthews

#88. While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Chris Matthews

#89. Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not.

Chris Matthews

#90. Each man had come to know the other's caricature as a lie.

Chris Matthews

#91. And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war.

Chris Matthews

#92. I know, when I look into the eyes of my own children, the look of wonder when I speak of life back in the '60s. That's why the Rolling Stones are such a hit even in their 60s, why Dennis Hopper is so compelling, even when he's making pitches for something unhip as long-term financial planning.

Chris Matthews