Jess Phillips Quotes

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

I would despise myself if I thought that I was procuring your votes by concealing my opinions, and by avowing one set of principles in one part of the state and a different set in another.

Governor [Myron] Herrick is not a bad man; he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.

If Democrats insist on looking for skeletons in the closet, they should take a long look at themselves. They've hidden more than their fair share.

Mitt Romney - he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung resume, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere.

I've never met a politician I haven't wanted to walk away from, and I've yet to hear a politician speak and actually believe the words coming out of his mouth.

When you're a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you're smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.

[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Bull permeates everything.... American people think politics and politicians are full of baloney.

Politicians have no politics.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Year after year we do not get reform as a result of scandals; we simply get more scandals.

That the politicians are permitted to carry on the same old disgraceful campaign from year to year is as insulting to the people as would be a gang of thieves coming back to a town they had robbed, staging a parade, and inviting the citizens to fall in and cheer.

In friendships, you expect total trust; in business you expect some dishonesty. But in politics, you not only expect distortion as a way of life but accept it with pleasure.

A Fellow who has deserved to be hang'd by all Laws human and divine, for his Conduct in private Life, will spring up into an important Champion at the Head of a Party.

… a lying crook in the Presidency

The cynical impudence with which the reformers have tried to manufacture an ideal statesman out of the late shady politician beats anything in novel-writing. They are making popular capital. They lie and maneuver just like candidates for office. The independents and reformers are as bad as the late lamented, and for the same reason. It pays.[

A politician will do anything to keep his job—even become a patriot.

Romney is pretending to be something he is not. He is renting the Republican party in order to fulfill his ambition of being President. The Republican party is renting Romney in order to fulfill its ambition of beating Barack Obama.

If you will refrain from telling any lies about the Republican Party, I'll promise not to tell the truth about the Democrats.

The moral state of society was most terrible. We stole from ourselves, took and gave bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums. And all of this from top to bottom; from bottom to top.

Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.

Dumping Rockefeller from the ticket was the most cowardly thing I have ever done.

The morality of Trump's lying bothered me, but he is a stupid liar.