Chris Matthews Quotes

Of course, I do not believe in having everyone who is a liberal called a communist, or everyone who is conservative called a fascist.

American political life has reached the stage where a vocal and powerful group uses "liberal" as a term of contempt.... Never before in our history has this been true. Liberals and conservatives have disagreed and, on occasion, have stoutly fought each other; but not in the lifelong recollection of the speaker has any similar attempt been made to convert an honorable word for a socially useful attitude into a sling of mud to be thrown at a political opponent.

Go look at what any liberal says about anybody they disagree with, and especially conservatives, the first thing you're gonna hear them talk about is hate, too much hate. Then you'll hear racist, and then bigoted, and automatically homophobic, intolerant. Just go down the list. And they all believe it about any conservative alive. And, in many of their cases, about any Republican alive.

They [Republicans] say, 'You're too conservative.' Was Thomas Jefferson too conservative? I'm tired of some people calling me wacky.

We have an extreme rightwing government in Britain, although it's called the Labour government. That's confused a lot of people, but it's confusing them less and less.

I always had a respect and an admiration for people who got into politics. I certainly have always been interested in law and political science.

One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists.

Donald Trump is an unstable charlatan who is appealing to the worst instincts in people, and I believe ultimately the American people are going to reject that.

It's so ironic that you often hear these right-wing people talking about the Constitution.

If liberals were prevented from ever again calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments. To be sure, they would still have racist, fascist, homophobe, ugly, and a few other highly nuanced arguments in the quiver. But the loss of dumb would nearly cripple them.

The left believes that we're an unwarranted, undeserving superpower because we're a racist, bigoted nation from our founding. So Obama presides over America's decline and tells everybody "get used to it. This is the new norm." The new norm is no full-time jobs. The new norm is government getting bigger. The new norm is you having no wage increases for 15 years. This is what the new norm is, as we entered the global marketplace. And the American people don't want any part of that. That's not America.

The left wants you to believe that true morality is defined by how much money you give the government, how much money you pay the government, how much money the government gets from you, because only the government does good stuff, only the government does good works, only the government cares about people. It's bogus.

Democrats believe people are basically good but must be saved from themselves by the government. Republicans believe people are basically bad but they'll be okay if they're left alone.

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.

I love America. I'm concerned about America and I believe the heart and soul of conservatives and Republicans recognize that the principles that Donald Trump is talking about have nothing to do with conservatism, nothing to do with keeping America strong.

Donald Trump believes in America, he believes in its people. He believes in its promise, is very liberating and you see that when you're with him privately, you see it publicly.

Being a conservative can never be about simply an attitude. Being a conservative cannot simply be about how long you're willing to scream, how angry you're willing to be or how many names you're willing to call people. That is not conservative.

If democracy is control by the people, as it is supposed to be, it is the right form of government. I believe in a complete democracy - individual, political, social, economic. If we really had that, which we don't now, it would be in harmony with divine purpose.

The more people figure this [liberalism a special kind of stupid] out, the more people that see it and are turned off by it, the more people who find it objectionable, the more people who ask, "Gee, what kind of people," the better off we're gonna be.

Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies.

The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.

The American people, whether you are Democrat, independent, Republican, progressive, conservative, do not believe corporations are people or that corporations should be able to buy elections.

In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc.

The labour party is like a stage-coach. If you rattle along at great speed everybody inside is too exhilarated or too seasick to cause any trouble. But if you stop everybody gets out and argues about where to go next.

Damn it, if just 5% of people got motivated in some direction, and it doesn't necessarily have to be what I believe in, but if they just got motivated and stopped getting their political ideologies from the mainstream media, they would go out and figure out what they want.