American Political Quotes

#1. I think we have to ask this administration, and the President specifically, about using their political capital now to stand up for the American consumer who is getting clobbered by these gasoline and oil prices.

Ron Wyden

#2. No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass.

John Marshall

#3. 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

#4. The American political experience can therefore be viewed as optimism in the collective.

Michael J. Fox

#5. Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder.

Hank Johnson

#6. Let's face it: The Jewish community is the most active political community in American society.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#7. Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon. He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation's capital.

Henry Bonilla

#8. I still have a great deal of faith in our political system and a great deal of faith in the American people and voter.

Sharron Angle

#9. Followers of another political party tell us that we will strengthen ourselves by ignoring our history, our traditions, our mythologies, our culture and vision, and by following the American way.

B.W. Powe

#10. From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

Narendra Modi

#11. The notion of a defense that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic, as it were, in the president's vision.

James R. Schlesinger

#12. We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in the American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.

Newt Gingrich

#13. We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules.

Barack Obama

#14. It's no surprise that at the same time that American universities have engaged in a serious commitment to diversity, they have been thought-prisons. We are not talking about diversity in any real way. We are talking about brown, black, white versions of the same political ideology.

Richard Rodriguez

#15. The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.

Ezra Klein

#16. We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency.

Harvey Mansfield

#17. How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

Molly Ivins

#18. Why would I be willing to challenge my Republican leadership? Because my allegiance will always be to the Constitution and the American people first and foremost, not to my political party.

Matt Salmon

#19. I think if more members of Congress would talk about what they see and what they want to do and what they want to accomplish, rather than talking about their opponent, we would begin to shape and reshape American public opinion on what the political world looks like.

Reid Ribble

#20. It is the members of this business elite ... that pose the greatest danger to our American way of life. They are the ones who've bought and paid for members of both political parties ...

Lou Dobbs

#21. The Archivist of the United States essentially works for the American people across partisan lines and not, regardless of which Administration nominates the person, for a particular President or political party.

Allen Weinstein

#22. Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left.

John Podhoretz

#23. Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

Robert Dallek

#24. It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

Vladimir Putin

#25. Those who take the extreme positions in American political and economic life are always wrong.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#26. If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

H.L. Mencken

#27. The polarization of Congress; the decline of civility; and the rise of attack politics in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the early years of the new century are a blot on our political system and a disservice to the American people.

Edward Brooke

#28. What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?

Frederick Douglass

#29. I've always found that avoiding insanity is useful in life - which in American politics sometimes puts one in the minority.

Tony Blankley

#30. Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

Barbara Jordan

#31. The American mass media have achieved what American political might could not: World domination.

Akbar S. Ahmed

#32. Either we start cutting the government and shrinking the size of government, or else we're going to face the political wrath of the American people.

Marlin Stutzman

#33. From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history.

Marco Rubio

#34. There is no man who is enterprising and keeps well up with the times but confesses that the women of to-day are in every respect, except political liberty, equal to the men.

S. Alice Callahan

#35. Nations need to constantly reaffirm their historical roots to maintain their political ideals. Motion pictures were one of the media used by nations to accommplish this task. The question one must ask is: Did the colonial films made faithfully represent the period in our nation's history?

John P. Harty Jr.

#36. A lot of America's success is because we're an open society and haven't brought dogma or religious influence into the American political process.

Jeff Hawkins

#37. It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to ... American democracy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#38. Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

Alex Pareene

#39. Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

James McGreevey

#40. I think the tragedy of Barack Obama's presidency is that although a lot of people around the world really admire Barack Obama a lot, they don't admire the American political and economic model as much as they used to.

Peter Beinart

#41. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#42. In many Latin American countries, the historic ties of Catholic bishops with the political elite rendered them less sensitive to the conditions of the poor and especially of indigenous people.

Moises Naim

#43. We go off the meds and elect Richard Nixon, the Nurse Ratched of the American political psych ward.

Don Winslow

#44. Patriotism is not 'my country right or wrong'; patriotism means loving the ideals for which America stands and having the courage to speak up when these ideals are distorted for personal or political gain. The American government was instituted to be the servant of the people, not our master.

Robert A. Heinlein

#45. The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

Jon Meacham

#46. I came into American politics and into this political system proud of politics and the way we make decisions.

Byron Dorgan

#47. To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

Michael Mandelbaum

#48. American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization - the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#49. The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

S.I. Hayakawa

#50. Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move.

Monica Crowley

#51. I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden for the rest of my life. My political life is over. I will never again have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time.

Richard M. Nixon

#52. If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in his bid for reelection on Tuesday, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in American history. It is hard to beat an incumbent no matter the economic climate.

Juan Williams

#53. ROSS PEROT was the best thing that happened in American politics since Richard Nixon acquired a taste for gin. In both cases, the political dialogue of the day was enriched by spontaneous gibberish that entertained the wrong people and made the right ones question their faith.

Hunter S. Thompson

#54. Never has the political class or the mainstream media that covers them been more out of touch with the American people than they are today.

Marco Rubio

#55. Our universities teach non-white, non-Christian, and female students to find offense everywhere. American students get degrees in Finding Offense.

Dennis Prager

#56. I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high
to permit the customary passions of political debate.

John F. Kennedy

#57. The white economic and political elite often failed to recognize blacks as American, just as blacks often failed to recognize their potential for advancement outside of the limited opportunities afforded them by whites.

W.E.B. Du Bois

#58. The Cold War was really the great struggle of the 20th Century and it shaped American political life from top to bottom.

Jeff Sharlet

#59. Public control of the political process requires public financing. The restoration of our American Democracy depends upon public financing.

Dennis Kucinich

#60. I just didn't understand the American political system, and I felt really stupid about that.

Drew Barrymore

#61. American nation was not founded on political principles. This nation was founded on spiritual principles.

Marco Rubio

#62. Whether serving in the military, building industry, organizing politically, or making their way in any other part of American culture, the Irish were determined to create a free and prosperous life for themselves. This Irish-American struggle led to social and political progress for all Americans.

Rashers Tierney

#63. Media scrutiny is a great trademark of the American political arena.

Duncan Hunter

#64. The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda

Joe Bageant

#65. We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.

Jimmy Carter

#66. There are reports that leaders from ISIS and al-Qaida met at a farm house in Syria last week, and agreed to work together against their common enemies. That story again: Two radical terrorist groups managed to do what two American political parties cannot.

Jimmy Fallon

#67. Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

Sam Harris

#68. I want judges on the Supreme Court who will not use that position to impose their personal policy preferences or political agenda on the American people.

John Cornyn

#69. Donald Trump is not a Republican. Donald Trump is not a conservative. Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history, basically a con job, where he's trying to take over the Republican Party by telling people he's someone who he is not.

Marco Rubio

#70. The challenge for Muslims in America is to respect the fears of ordinary people while resisting the exploitation of those fears by political parties, lobbies and sectors of the media. To meet this challenge, Muslims must reassess their own involvement, behavior and contributions in American society.

Tariq Ramadan

#71. Each side, hypocritical enough to pretend that it lives up to its own hype, is equally insistent that the other side's worst is truly all that it is. American political advertising is sinking slowly toward a level worthy of Soviet propaganda.

Os Guinness

#72. Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American people will vote for the less bald of the two.

Victor Gold

#73. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.

Angela Davis

#74. What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should.

Thelma Drake

#75. The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

Mario Cuomo

#76. If millions of Americans choose to weigh in on the outcome of 'American Idol' through text messages and the Web, then why not harness similar technological tools to encourage discourse on the political landscape?

Ruzwana Bashir

#77. American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

Richard Dawkins

#78. Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

Thomas Frank

#79. In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal or even superior, to that of the other sex.

Catharine Beecher

#80. It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#81. Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Gore Vidal

#82. Cripes, I can't keep up on this political correct shit. I don't even know what to call myself. One minute I'm black. Then I'm African American. Then I'm a person of color. Who the hell makes these rules up, anyhow?

Janet Evanovich

#83. There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.

Mark Twain

#84. American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

Michael Mandelbaum

#85. It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.

William H. Calvin

#86. I have spent time discussing the American political system and current events in Taiwan with the junior diplomats, and they have repeatedly expressed their country's desire to avoid confrontation with China.

Michael K. Simpson

#87. In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.

Paul Lutus

#88. The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

William Pfaff

#89. ...the fight that political philosophers have always identified as the central conflict in human history: that between the individual and society. Thus far, scholars have shown little interest in finding this conflict in American history...

Thaddeus Russell

#90. With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.

Eldridge Cleaver

#91. In any crass political calculation, drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class, we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.

Jeff Goodell

#92. The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of thought and belief a logical next step.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#93. Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world.

Barry Goldwater

#94. Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.

Dorothy Day

#95. A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.

Walter Bagehot

#96. Political war was to be the rule, not the exception, in American life. "The country is so totally given up to the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfold the one or the other is an inexpiable offense," Adams wrote during Jefferson's first term.12

Jon Meacham

#97. I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.

David Mamet

#98. People didn't have the political guts to stand up against an American war.

George McGovern

#99. There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.

Sherman Alexie

#100. American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression.

Erik Larson