Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

When Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions for federal district court judgeship, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination.

The extremist, isolationist policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen have been rejected and crushed

Let's just be clear: The reason this has been making headlines is because Donald Trump was discussing and bragging about sexual assault 11 years ago on a bus.It's not Hillary Clinton who put those words in his mouth.

I work constantly to be better at being rejected.

Jeff Sessions is the lone voice in the Senate.

You got me sitting on the shelf, while you're out bewitching someone else.

[Donald Trump] has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it.

We've been trying to sell out for years, nobody's buying!

I get nervous about press and about being rejected or disappointing myself.

A small minority in Turkey even accuses me of having political ambitions, when in fact I have been struggling with various illnesses for many years.

To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all.

Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist candidate for president was the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 and he tried to get Jeff Sessions' nomination through that committee, but he couldn't.

I feel crushingly embarrassed when I do bad work, so being rejected after doing bad work is actually harder than being rejected after doing good work.

Because Republicans defected and voted with all the Democrats to reject Jeff Sessions' nomination when they discovered that when he was working as a prosecutor in Alabama, he called the NAACP Un-American.

I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just-" Lily: "Slipped out? It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends ... You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.

That was a brave and principled thing for Ecuador to do [give me asylum application]. Now we have the U.S. election [campaign], the Ecuadorian election is in February next year, and you have the White House feeling the political heat as a result of the true information that we have been publishing.

When you're fired, you're rejected. It's as simple as that.

The worst years of my life were the first two years I was doing standup. You're learning how to do, and you're going on stage in front of two drunks and people aren't laughing and you're broke. That's a really hard time in your life.

The last thing members of the committee want to do is pass legislation.

I wrote a letter to Harvard, explaining that I was having difficulty deciding between it and the University of Pennsylvania. Could I come and visit? Years later, the dean of students at Harvard told me that my letter had been posted in the dean’s office for the amusement of the staff. Thus did I learn the measure of institutional arrogance.

It rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-faced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others, by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures that they may be rejected.

I'm twenty-nine, yes really, I'm from Aspen, Colorado, I'm six feet one, yes really, I've been at Quantico two years, yes I date guys, no I dress like this just because I like it, no I'm not married, no I don't currently have a boyfriend, and no I don't want to have dinner with you tonight.

Then he exploded. "No!" he said. That familiar injunction. I'd heard it so many times. "No. I cannot take this steel. It would not be correct." He opened his knife drawer. "It goes here," he said, "until you return."(That's how you leave: by never saying good-bye.)And I learned that: to return. I came back the following year and the year after that. I hope to return every year (after all, I may never have the chance to learn so much), until I have no one to return to. (301)

I think the Democrats are right to protest, but I don't think Jeff Sessions is so far out of the range of normalcy that he shouldn't be confirmed.

Acting forces you to ask yourself, 'Can my constitution take a decade of constant rejection?' And after ten years, you either make it or you don't. And the problem is they don't tell you in advance.