Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

I want to put the interests of ordinary working people right up there, center stage. Those people who - you know, they're working all the hours. They're doing their best for their families and sometimes they just feel the odds are stacked against them.

Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I've been told to 'sit down and shut up' over and over again. Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people.

Gabby Giffords was a mentor of mine in the state Legislature and also in Congress.

What I care about is whether or not a leader will work with America's working people, whether or not a leader cares about responsibility and honest work and whether or not a leader will fight to keep the American Dream alive.

I learned that Congress is a place with more heart than courage; there are more good souls in Washington than brave ones. I learned that the whole is not always the sum of its parts: that what you put in doesn't always match what you get out.

So I will stand more steadfastly for the things I stand up for, like people who work for a living. I'd like to be able to stand that way when I go to Congress.

The people are way ahead of the Congress. They are way ahead of the administration.

Who ever heard of a charismatic Congress?

Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

If the American working people were as I would like them to be, they would all be socialists and I would be President.

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?

There's not much more of an honour - to work for, and with, working people.

Tin House magazine is a port in the storm for people who love language. It is unfailingly excellent, and committed to publishing new voices in addition to delivering freaky-fresh work from established writers.

The most important thing in my life, its leitmotif, has been the constant and close contacts with working people, with workers and peasants.

We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters -- then we are for it!

For Democrats to win, they're going to have to address the needs of working people. They're going to have to address the needs of the middle class.

Why I supported Keith Ellison for chairing the DNC because I know Keith. And I know he's not going to take a lot of stuff. He's going to be in the halls of Congress arguing. But he is going to go out to the protests and talk to people.

We know the legislation that passed the House. It was the worst piece of legislation frankly against working class people that I can remember in my political life in the Congress.

I did this campaign that was called "Back to the Basics" where I went back to the street, went back to my block, and really felt the people. We've got to go back to that sometimes. We distance ourselves from that and we see it from afar. Some people can't relate back to that; once you're out of it, they don't want to relate back to that. It's always good to get back to the basics, though. You've got to touch the roots, you've got to touch those people. Regardless of what's going on, people always respect that.

Vision and the ability to mobilize and inspire people at the grassroots. That's what the most important criteria is going to be for any DNC chair.

Speaking as a human being, not as a businessman - the unions are great. The unions are great for the working people because they protect you, but I didn't see them that way as a young man. First of all, the papers would connect them with thee communists - labor unions were communists.

Donald Trump is targeting the traditional Republican voters, the average person with an average income, the working class, a certain group of entrepreneurs and those people who embrace traditional values.

We face a campaign of fear and division every day at the workplace or every time we try to organize a work site. We're able to get through that by talking through the facts and having people join together. Donald Trump, I will say three things about Donald Trump. One, he's unfit to be president. Two, he would make it much more difficult for working people to make ends meet. And, three, he would tear our country apart.

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.