Stephen Breyer Quotes

In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.

A $5,000 campaign contribution to a member of Congress will hardly get you a thank you these days.

Money in politics leads to bad things—and I am bipartisan in that view.

Can the public feel secure with a host of judges elected for a variety of conflicting reasons.

If it can be thought that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap then the nation is really in trouble.

Redistricting makes the inequities in campaign financing even worse. Most elections are so noncompetitive due to how the lines are drawn that big donors already know who's going to win. So they give to the likely winners to curry favor.

Our current Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years [gifts to politicians] and renamed it legitimate..

If giving money to a politician prejudiced my ability to think and write honestly, I wouldn't do it. Fortunately, it doesn't.

It's an issue that Democrats and Republicans seem to come together on, the over-influence of money in politics and in power.

Am I right in saying that the locust of this problem is simply that judges in America are half political animals and half oracular demigods?

In the old days, money controlled politics. Today, information controls politics. So I think with the advent of the Internet, the power of wealth has been diminished. Look up all the people you know who spent millions and millions of dollars and fell short.

If the courts are making the decisions, it matters who the judge is and, of course, people are concerned with what is the bottom line.

Without putting the brakes on out-of-control campaign contributions from individuals and corporations - it will be business as usual, with 1 percent of Americans pulling the strings.

I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.

At the end of the day, money is just a proxy for votes. That is what makes politics so vulnerable to social media.

Nobody wants a judge to be subject to the political whim of the moment.

It's wherever business rules, business is going to get the politicians they want because they control the money and money controls the power.

I don't think a judge should be too much involved in outside activities.

The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

Rule of Dark Matter: SuperPAC dollars cannot be seen by most voters but account for most of the money in this universe.

The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges

Even though Senator Cranston was one of the most liberal members of the Senate, most of the time I was with him he was on the phone asking rich men for money….His ideals were as wonderful as any, but at the end of the day, he was still beholden to money.

The money is given in these state judges elections by the very people who will appear before these judges. Now that can’t be a good system.

Eventually, money wins in politics.