Stephen Colbert Quotes

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work.

To be honest, I haven't seen much serious budget planning since the Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections and grabbed onto the Senate filibuster. It's not the White House's fault that John Boehner couldn't deliver on a bigger deal.

I think it is very good for the country, for the world, and especially for the Democrats that Harry Reid is retiring.

I am very glad that Paul Ryan left the government as a capitulating supplicant to Donald Trump while the government was shut down, while the debt hit record levels, right? Every single thing Paul Ryan claimed to care about.

In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor.

The Senate being tied is a start. Now, if only it could be gagged.

I avoid people who I actually like. I suppose that’s a phobia but also a habit.

Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan.

The unfortunate part is there's not enough balance in the legislative chambers, and particularly the senate that has to do that confirmation for there to be enough pushback.

I am told that very early on in this transition process, to expect that [Donald] Trump will announce his nominee for the Supreme Court.

He sits beside the ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy who voted against Jeff Session's nomination in that committee in 1986.

Here’s the million-dollar question: how are you going to write this book if you’re afraid to start writing? Give your friend Doubt a name, and then block his calls.

It looks like President Bush will be handing over power to the Iraqis by June 30th. That's amazing and not only that, but it looks like he'll be handing over power to the Democrats by November 2nd.

In pre-Trump Washington where the old rules applied, Rudy Giuliani could never survive the Senate confirmation process.

His problem, is that the other side of Lindsey Graham is that he's known as sort of, I don't know, a moderate, an accommodationist.

[Barack Obama] says that he thinks America felt better, more confident, because Washington was not simply in a gridlock, in stasis, where nothing was being done. And he talks about that as a positive.

The Kochs are very much involved in this election, not backing [Donald] Trump but backing everything down the ballot from him. They're pouring money into capturing the Senate and the House of Representatives, and state Houses across the country.

[Congress] can just make [Mitt] Romney president. And we'd be like, "All right, fine."

Walking back from the convention site I chatted with a normal Bostonian for several blocks -- who must have identified me through our covert system of signals. He was mostly bemused by the Democrats' primetime speakers and told me he used to be an independent, but for the last 20 years found himself voting mostly Republican. Then he corrected himself and said he votes for the American.

I never thought that Bill Clinton should be the president. When he was running to be the president of the United States, he said on over a hundred occasions, he said the following: He said, 'One of the great accomplishments while I was the governor of Arkansas, was to take my state in education from 50th to 49th.' And I thought, ' you know, Bill, you should keep that a secret.

We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it.

I think that's why we see this mixed reaction - Republican congressional leaders like Paul Ryan speaking out very firmly, but Republican candidates not as much, with the exception of the candidates in the single digits like Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham, who said how to make America great again tell - Donald Trump to go to hell.

The one person who most blocks you from a full, happy, and successful life is you.

Whether it's before the election or after the election, the principle is the American people are choosing their next president and their next president should pick this Supreme Court nominee.