Top 68 Primaries Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Primaries

#1. Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton, but he won more than 12 million votes in the primaries and was respectfully and elaborately saluted by Hillary Clinton, whom he has endorsed.

Scott Simon

#2. I have made it my practice to not get involved in primaries because picking the Republican candidate is the voters' job.

Rick Scott

#3. You know, winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification, or a sign, of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win, because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.

Mark Penn

#4. Campaigns and primaries can get ugly. There are always messy squabbles.

Joy-Ann Reid

#5. The man who once famously pronounced "I know words, I have the best words" scorched through the primaries using the vocabulary of a signing gorilla ("China - money - bad!").

Matt Taibbi

#6. I have decided that I will test my ability ... in the fires of the primaries and not just in the smoke-filled rooms of Miami Beach.

Theodore H. White

#7. I took a lot of heat from Republicans when I stepped out of John McCain's campaign after the 2008 primaries. I still supported McCain, and voted for him, but I just didn't want to be the tip of the spear attacking Obama.

Mark McKinnon

#8. The Tea Party definitely scored a significant victory with Senator Cruz's election in 2012 and scored victories in some statewide primaries. But to me, as the Tea Party gets stronger within the Republican Party in Texas, the prospect of a blue Texas becomes stronger and stronger.

Julian Castro

#9. I will continue to work with the Republican Party to try to encourage primaries.

Mitt Romney

#10. It's secret that evangelical Christians are critical players in Republican primaries.

Michel Martin

#11. You look at these primaries so far, do you realize they don't like [Ted] Cruz either, Ted - Chris [Christie]. In fact, maybe they dislike Cruz more than [Donald] Trump. But Cruz and Trump are the only guys that have won anything. The establishment candidates in this race cannot get noticed.

Rush Limbaugh

#12. Primaries are the place where you see whose message is connecting with the largest number of people.

Mitt Romney

#13. I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors.

Noam Chomsky

#14. First there was the New Hampshire primary, and we had nearly a year leading up to it. And now, look! Three primaries in one weekend! How many of these things are they going to have?

Ed Helms

#15. Over the weekend, John Kerry - the big John Kerry juggernaut moves on - he won primaries in Washington D.C., Nevada and, I think, Canada. And he's so confident that he's started nailing that intern again.

David Letterman

#16. Primaries are a family fight. I'm a pro-free enterprise, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life Republican.

Heather Wilson

#17. No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

Walter Lippmann

#18. Had I stayed longer in some primaries, I would have probably done better in states like Nevada, California, and New Mexico - but I ran out of the money after the second primary in New Hampshire.

Bill Richardson

#19. Trump has got to, I think, move to a new level. This is no longer the primaries. He's no longer an interesting contender. He is now the potential leader of the United States and he's got to move his game up to the level of being a potential leader.

Newt Gingrich

#20. I think Roosevelt proves himself to be the ultimate political force in this book. He really wasn't for primaries until he realized it was the only way in which he could challenge a sitting president then it becomes his crusade, is to create the primaries and to call for the people to rule.

Geoffrey Cowan

#21. During the presidential primaries of 1940, I received a request from the Democratic National Committee to sing God Bless America before the speeches.

Kate Smith

#22. I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can't have favorite colors.

Chuck Close

#23. Plan B is if Hillary [Clinton] is indicted. Then, even if I missed the deadlines for the first couple of primaries, I'll be there to rescue the party. All bets are off.

Joe Biden

#24. I don't really think it's appropriate for me to be picking and choosing in the primaries. It's pretty dumb politics for a Republican to choose between Republicans in a contested primary because obviously you're going to be offending some people.

John Cornyn

#25. Republican primary voters, whether they're close primaries or open, are voting for anybody but candidates attached to the Republican establishment.

Rush Limbaugh

#26. The Republican Party needs to, first of all, quit electing people in primaries that have prehistoric notions about women's issues.

Mark McKinnon

#27. In 2008, I was one of the young feminist whippersnappers who voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries - or as many of my older counterparts called me at the time, a traitor.

Jessica Valenti

#28. Well, we had a bunch of primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders won the Nebraska and Kansas caucuses. That keeps his campaign alive. But Hillary Clinton won Louisiana, which was the big prize of the night, so she ended up winning more delegates than he did yesterday.

Mara Liasson

#29. I'm wishing every Saturday had primaries, because welcome to an amazing Sunday, where everything seems a tad bit clearer this morning.

Chuck Todd

#30. Bill and Hillary Clinton have one central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get re-elected, use the '04 primaries and general election to clean out the underbrush of competing Democratic candidates, and proceed unimpeded to the '08 nomination.

Dick Morris

#31. A lot of people criticize the primaries, but I think they are absolutely essential to the education of the President of the United States.

Pierre Salinger

#32. There is no softer target in GOP primaries than the United Nations and foreign-aid spending.

Elliott Abrams

#33. Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren't civil war, they are democracy at work, and that's beautiful.

Sarah Palin

#34. There is a reality to the primary process, and you don't win primaries by being ahead in national polls. You win them by winning Iowa, by winning New Hampshire, by winning South Carolina, winning Florida.

Rudy Giuliani

#35. One of Governor Romney's aides today on television said that Governor Romney, after he wins the primaries, will be like an [Etch A Sketch] - you take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone, and he's going to draw a whole new picture for the general election.

Rick Santorum

#36. Tom Brady was suspended 4 games for hiding evidence. Hillary should have to sit out first 4 primaries.

Jim Gilmore

#37. When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into to pull out edicts and prejudices and rules and opinions, and I wish they had fact-checked it! Especially Rick Santorum.

Walter Kirn

#38. In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered.

John Podhoretz

#39. There are not enough purple states. No one votes in primaries, except the most ideological. And big money comes in to support or oppose the candidates in those primaries.

Evan Bayh

#40. And of course, in the case of Barack Obama, had he not won primaries - and particularly the heavily important caucus in Iowa - if the public hadn't shown that they were prepared to vote for a black president, we wouldn't have one today.

Geoffrey Cowan

#41. I normally don't endorse in Democratic primaries.

Ed Rendell

#42. I know I earn less at my primary school than you do, but I don't have to work as hard at my primary school.

Arthur Adamov

#43. Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities.

Jane Jacobs

#44. The primary notion i hold to be the Living Power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#45. The primary declaration of Christianity is not "This do!" but "This happened!

Evelyn Underhill

#46. The primary and literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning.

Northrop Frye

#47. The primary cause of disease is in us, always in us.

Antoine Bechamp

#48. Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions.

Alfred Hitchcock

#49. I do not elevate the time or mode of baptism to a primary doctrine.

John Piper

#50. The leading edge of reality is mind, and mind is the primary substratum of being.

Terence McKenna

#51. Ultimately what you do is secondary. But how you do it is primary.

Eckhart Tolle

#52. Being is primary and doing is secondary for them. Celebration comes first and work takes a back seat in their lives. Work is preparatory to celebration.

Rajneesh

#53. Getting the right balance is the primary concern.

Marion Blakey

#54. Sexual acts are one of the primary means by which we can act out our inarticulated inner lives.

Sallie Tisdale

#55. Happiness is a by-product. It is not a primary product of life. It is a thing which you suddenly realize you have because you're so delighted to be doing something which perhaps has nothing whatever to do with happiness.

Robertson Davies