The Candidate Quotes

#1. It is my hope that all of the Republicans who recognize that nominating a candidate who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a host of issues, who has a very similar record, is not the path to victory. And if we come together, if conservatives stand together, we're going to have a great night on Tuesday.

Ted Cruz

#2. In the view of everyone, I am a viable candidate and I should be on the ballot.

John McCain

#3. Minnesotans are ticket splitters. They look to the candidate, not the party, which is the way it should be, and that's only going to help me.

Erik Paulsen

#4. There are interviewers who try to trip up the candidate," says Hanold. "If you make people do intellectual gymnastics, you're not getting their true self. There is no right answer to any question I ask. I want an authentic response." To

Ethan F. Becker

#5. Through the potent example of his own life, President Obama enabled us to believe the best about America, and, therefore, about ourselves. That uplifting narrative - essentially equating the promise of America with his extraordinary life story - swept candidate Obama into the presidency.

Cynthia P. Schneider

#6. There is no question that I would be the better president. But as for the campaign, are Americans ready for a general election in which both major party candidates are ADD? Quite frankly, it could provide an opening for a third party candidate, maybe someone backed by the evil Koch brothers.

Joe Biden

#7. to buy us.' 'The candidate wants to get here fast,' Mike was saying. 'Too fast,

Daniel Pembrey

#8. I want to know in this day and age, whether it is possible for any candidate who is not a billionaire or who is not beholden to the billionaire class, to be able to run successful campaigns.

Bernie Sanders

#9. I have this to say to the people: go the polls and vote for the candidate of your choice ... This is your responsibility; do not neglect it.

Hosni Mubarak

#10. The only candidate I'd allow to play my music would be Bigfoot, and unless we're talking about foraging for squirrels, he's notoriously apolitical.

Greg Gutfeld

#11. There's going to be a demand for perfectionism on the part of Hillary Clinton, or any other pro-equality woman candidate, that would not be made of men. There are going to be attacks based on different standards of morality and different standards of dress and physical attractiveness.

Gloria Steinem

#12. Is the marketing effort designed to convey the candidate's convictions, or are the convictions expressed by the candidate the reflections of a "big data" research effort into individuals' likely preferences and prejudices?

Henry Kissinger

#13. What's the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.

Newt Gingrich

#14. Remember, the first presidential candidate to reject public financing for both the primary and general election was ... Barack Obama, in 2008. He did it, in spite of a flat pledge to the contrary, because his campaign saw that it could vastly outspend John McCain.

Jeff Greenfield

#15. In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

Richard M. Nixon

#16. Once their gaze turned back toward Europe, the puzzle dissolved: West Germany was the obvious equivalent and, indeed, a splendid candidate for the role of the global plan's European shock-absorbing pillar - certainly not Britain.

Yanis Varoufakis

#17. I am not a party candidate, and if elected cannot be President of a party, but the President of the whole people.

Zachary Taylor

#18. Rule of thumb: When Democrats lose, they blame the candidate. When Republicans lose, they blame the opposition.

Timothy Noah

#19. The candidate was required to prepare himself by confession, fasting, and passing the night in prayer.

Horatio Alger

#20. I know of not one Republican candidate that would not appear publicly with Mitt Romney and I know many Democrats that don't even want to be in the same city - forget the same stage - with President Obama.

Pete Sessions

#21. To take all that we are and have and hand it over to God may not be easy; but it can be done; and when it is done, the world has in it one less candidate for misery.

Paul Scherrer

#22. Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

Ronald Reagan

#23. In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine.

Robert Dallek

#24. One of the first to reevaluate Genghis Khan was an unlikely candidate: peace advocate Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indian independence.

Jack Weatherford

#25. A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.

Stanislaw Lem

#26. Is Romney a tea party candidate? I'd probably say that he's the least of the candidates running for president right now that would be considered a tea party candidate.

Tim Scott

#27. It will be almost impossible for any other candidate to raise the money that the Clintons can raise.

John Catsimatidis

#28. No candidate dares to look for a new campaign model that could really enhance the democratic process. Instead we are left with the current one which makes our candidates look like hucksters.

Greta Van Susteren

#29. Sobel was Jewish, urban, with a commission from the National Guard. Hester had started as a private, then earned his commission from Officer Candidate's School (OCS). Most

Stephen E. Ambrose

#30. I am very proud to be the only candidate up here who does not have a Super PAC, who's not raising huge sums of money from Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders

#31. The Democrats current crudeness is a function of their desperation, and the imminent ratification of Howard Dean, the least charming presidential candidate in recent memory, as their party chairman only serves to punctuate the problem.

Joe Klein

#32. From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

Noah Feldman

#33. The pathogen-free pig is considered a possible candidate,

Jenni Ogden

#34. I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count.

Newt Gingrich

#35. There will always be, within a party, people who backed one candidate versus people who backed another, and there will be factions in the party, and there's always a little glee faction looking at the difficulty of the other faction.

Mitt Romney

#36. I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

Jesse Jackson

#37. Senate races are different from House races, in the sense that they are more candidate-driven. The higher the office - that is, I mean, governor, senator, president - the more important the candidate.

Judy Woodruff

#38. I was guided by Allah (God) to give a yardstick to the voting public, particularly Black people as to what will set that candidate apart from others.

Louis Farrakhan

#39. Loyalty is never built upon honor, brother. It is built upon blood.

Rachel E. Carter

#40. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother's name, and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I: someone brilliant without even trying.

Mona Simpson

#41. [O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood.

George Packer

#42. Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, 'Two cars in every garage'. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, 'Two families in every garage'.

Harry S. Truman

#43. I am aware that by many persons, it is considered in the nature of a joke to to become a candidate and to be elected as a member of the Legislature.

Samuel Ealy Johnson Jr.

#44. Let's just say when she's seventy, she'll be a leading candidate for the Olivia Foxworth award.

V.C. Andrews

#45. Former President George W. Bush has hired a man to lead his presidential think tank in Dallas. The man was hired because he was the only candidate who could say the words, 'George W. Bush think tank' with a straight face.

Conan O'Brien

#46. I regret that a private comment I made to the vice presidential candidate made it through the public airways.

George W. Bush

#47. As a candidate, Clinton had - as all candidates do - torn into his predecessor for coddling China and promised that he would get tough on China's human rights abuses. As president, Clinton had - as all presidents do - come to see that the reality was a bit more complicated.

Michael Tomasky

#48. I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard. Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it's not even a contact sport - it's a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns.

Kamala Harris

#49. What sort of job can you hold in America in which it is safe to hold the personal conviction that same-sex marriage is wrong? The answer: there is no such job. Except Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. Then you're fine.

Ben Shapiro

#50. I think that the American people are curious about who a candidate is, what their background is, who their family is, what their faith experience has been, their education, their work experience. All of those are factors that voters look at because they want to take a measure of the individual.

Michele Bachmann

#51. The conservative candidate who ignores moderates is as misguided as the moderate candidate who ignores conservatives.

Mike Lee

#52. I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question.

Victoria Woodhull

#53. Al is, and always has been, the person who has been the candidate - the elected official. And he is the one who makes policy. As his wife, I have the wonderful opportunity to advocate for causes that I am passionate about, and I'm thankful for that.

Tipper Gore

#54. That's insightful, but equally insightful is what they say afterwards. The other thing that I always point out is it's one thing to talk to the candidate. It's quite another to talk to the staff, and that's when you find out what's really going on.

Kurt Meyer

#55. Voting for a candidate for the DC circuit is very different from confirming someone to the US Supreme Court. I have been very clear that the Senate should not confirm any nominee in a lame duck session.

Ted Cruz

#56. I have ... submitted the resignation of the government, and I have declared that I will not be a candidate to head the (next) government.

Rafik Hariri

#57. I'm angry that George Bush got to be in the White House, and I'm angry that [Al] Gore wasn't able to be a better candidate after eight years of a great economy and being an incumbent.

Eddie Vedder

#58. In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.'

Allen West

#59. Um, yeah. For instance, take, you know, take, for instance, the issue of -- I'm drawing a blank, and I hate it when I do that, particularly on television.
-- potential McCain VP candidate Mark Sanford, asked on CNN to name differences in economic policy between Bush and McCain

Mark Sanford

#60. When his apprenticeship was finished (the candidate for Knighthood) was received into the Knightly Order by a ritual of sacramental awe ...

Ariel Durant

#61. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

John F. Kennedy

#62. To me, Ann Romney sounds like a better candidate than her husband. She put her MS into remission through horseback riding, alternative therapies, and a healthy diet. She knows how to pace herself. She has a sense of humor and an innate honesty, and her hair moves in the wind. Maybe she should run.

Patti Davis

#63. Neither this nation nor this party can afford a candidate so captive to the demands of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a president of the incompetent left.

Arlen Specter

#64. You can't be the candidate and the campaign manager.

Roger Stone

#65. As much as I cherish your [McCarthy's] right to a platform as an independent candidate I am not going to sit here quietly and listen to you denigrate the two party system. It has served our country well over the last two hundred years.

John Anderson

#66. The key question for many voters is: How much is the candidate offering for my vote?

James Bovard

#67. Advancement and promotion in Mystic Masonry is not dependent on favor; it cannot be given till it has been earned and the candidate has stored in himself the power to rise, any more than a pistol can be fired till it has been loaded.

Max Heindel

#68. The River of Baptism I met, my spiritual adoption confirmed. The changing dramas in my life I experienced. The Holy language preceded my salvation found tongue, candidate of heavenly power I'm made.

Darmie Orem

#69. In many campaigns, one candidate or another is asked to answer for comments he or she made in the past. The answer is usually gibberish - 'That was a long time ago,' or 'I was trying to say something else.'

Andrew Rosenthal

#70. Presidential candidate Donald Trump had a meeting with Ted Cruz. He said he does not know why he agreed to fly to New York to meet Ted Cruz and then he promised to bring that kind of leadership to the Oval Office.

Conan O'Brien

#71. I've been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama - then candidate Obama - going through Iowa making promises. The gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I've seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of 'til death do we part.

Mitt Romney

#72. Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.

P. J. O'Rourke

#73. The leading non-establishment Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, is just sailing past [establishment Republican candidates] in the polls. He is still surging. He is basically killing them all.

Melissa Harris-Perry

#74. I'm not just a candidate, I'm the President

Barack Obama

#75. 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

#76. And that John F. Kennedy uttered the first variation of "ask not what your country can do for you" in Detroit on Labor Day in 1960. So Detroit was really central to Democratic politics United States. Every Democratic candidate would start their fall campaigns in Cadillac Square.

David Maraniss

#77. People have said I'm the candidate of anger. Well, we have a right to be angry. We lost 3 million jobs. We lost our place as the moral leader of the world.

Howard Dean

#78. I wonder who really is the change candidate? It can't be both of them [Hillary Clinton & Barak Obama]. What would be a black man and a woman - how could that be different than the 43 other Presidents we've had?

Jon Stewart

#79. A 527 doesn't have a wife. It doesn't have a brother-in-law who knows a lot about politics, or a union president who calls and doesn't like the color of the suit, or bimbo eruptions. It's the perfect candidate, because it has no personal characteristics.

Roger Stone

#80. But unlike Jack, Bobby had not been groomed to be a candidate, and he was constitutionally incapable of the flattery and false praise with which politicians like Johnson got others to do their daily bidding.

Jonathan Darman

#81. I believe Donald Trump is the best guy for president; and I'm not going to shy away and I take the risk. I could just stay home and don't talk about any candidate.

Joe Arpaio

#82. To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

David Frum

#83. The concern in polling is to present the issue in the way it is likely to emerge in a campaign so the candidate has reasonably accurate information about how the public feels about the issue. The difficulty is that it is often not clear how an issue will emerge.

Jeffrey M. Stonecash

#84. PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job.

Max Levchin

#85. Miss Hunter leaned toward Stormy. Well, as you also may know, ever since the year when Dylan Jackson was nominated for and won prom queen without his knowledge, it's been school policy to inform all nominees that they have been selected as a candidate for prom queen.

John Zakour

#86. It doesn't matter if the Republican or the Democratic candidate wins the governorship [of Hawaii]. Either one is already in the kingdom,

Ed Silvoso

#87. It is an article of faith with the Democrats that they must fool Americans by simulating agreement with normal people. The winner of the Democratic primary is always the candidate who does the best impersonation of an American.

Ann Coulter

#88. If you haven't admired anybody in your whole life, you are the best candidate to be the world's greatest megalomaniac!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#89. I don't have many litmus tests, but this is one: Any candidate who doesn't understand that we need to balance the budget should not be president of the United States.

Jim DeMint

#90. The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice are immediate and discernible.

George Will

#91. Without bureaus, committees, officials or emissaries to manufacture sentiment in his favor, without intrigue or effort on his part, Grant is the candidate whose supporters have never threatened to bolt.

Roscoe Conkling

#92. You've got to find a difierent approach. You've got to create some interest in your language, in the words and pictures you create. If a candidate can't give a 10-minute speech and have reporters reaching for their pens in the first 90 seconds, he probably shouldn't be running.

Roger Ailes

#93. Quite openly, voters selected on the basis of perceived character and past behaviour rather than the views a candidate expressed. Where an individual's nature was not obvious, the Roman people tended to be drawn to a famous name, for there was a sense that virtue and ability were inherited.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#94. Our history told of kings that smiled and kings that conquered. He was the latter.

Rachel E. Carter

#95. When a Caltech student asked the eminent cosmologist Michael Turner what his "bias" was in favoring one or another particle as a likely candidate to compromise dark matter in the universe, Feynmann snapped, "Why do you want to know his bias? Form your own bias!"

Richard P. Feynman

#96. If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again. I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it policy-wise. We're not going to win a general election with a candidate that refuses to detail policy.

Marco Rubio

#97. I'm the perfect candidate to be affected by SARS. I'm highly susceptible to infections.

Ron Santo

#98. Mo Udall didn't want the presidency bad enough. He was too sane. He was a marvelous guy, but you had the feeling there was another Udall outside his body watching the candidate Udall who was too extravagant, telling him to cut it out.

Jack Germond

#99. Unfortunately, every American citizen takes the same position that we don't like negative advertisements. But they work! And, as you see, many a candidate has prevailed by tearing down the reputation of an opponent in a more advantageous position.

Jimmy Carter

#100. From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it.

Mark Shields