Nancy Pelosi Quotes

I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine.

In the first weeks of the Obama administration, 'bipartisanship' was the reigning buzzword, and when the Beltway thinks 'bipartisan,' it pictures President Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill putting aside their differences and forging a legislative partnership, a ruddy pair of genial patriarchs bonding over the Blarney Stone.

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

People who truly represent an extreme on either side have a very difficult time getting bipartisan support for what they're doing.

Rhetorically, President Obama is a champion of bipartisanship. In practice, though, he is almost always its enemy.

I'd like to see that bipartisanship come back that we used to have in the House of Representatives, in the Clinton years. I think there's a possibility that the voters are going to send the message that everybody running - Congress, the Senate, the presidency - that they want us to come together.

While I am grateful for the friendships and relationships that I have with my Republican colleagues, it would be naive to pretend that those friendships will change the way that major policies are enacted in Arizona.

I've decided to cut out the part of the speech where I say anything nice about Democrats.

I really don't think there's a lack of good will between members of the parties. I go back a long way with a lot of Republicans, so I don't think it's personal. But there does seem to be a much greater gap in both the philosophy and emphasis on partisan victories as opposed to policy development.

If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a very good representative of my party.

I'm a believer in bipartisanship.

I have also come to understand Congress' need for a bipartisan as well as a partisan capacity.

I'm going to work with Republicans when they do things I agree with and I'm going to fight Republicans when they're doing things that I think are damaging.

I do hope that next year Republicans and Democrats will do nothing.

I wouldn’t be too serious about bipartisanship. It’s a great myth that ought to be fostered. And don’t bring too damn much scholarship to bear on it. You’ll prove it out of existence if you’re not careful.

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

If you really want to get something done in Washington, it has to be done in a bi-Partisan way.

This is good government. We have divided government. To make divided government work you can’t ask each other to compromise core principles…. We ask each other to find common ground for the common good.

Any legislation that is passed by one political party can be reversed by the other party. The only way to produce lasting legislation in America is bipartisanship. Without it, there is no sustainablity.

We can work with anybody. I mean, we passed the 9/11 health bill with Tom Cotton. Most people would assume I wouldn't be able to work with Tom Cotton and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

I'm pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There's just no common ground. I don't know if it's distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there's no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything.

At the end of the day, I think Donald Trump will be the great unifier of the Democratic Party.

Virginians want you to work across the aisle.

When I first came to the Senate, people in both parties went out of their way to have personal relationships.

People love to talk about the old bipartisanship. But it wasn't really bipartisanship. Yeah, they had a different label. But they're replaced now by people with basically the same views.