Bernie Sanders Quotes

Women and people of color and young people especially are about to have this amazing opportunity to shift the political conversation in this country for the good of all of us, toward more progressive policies, and it's a really amazing and important time to be part of that.

I believe there are huge numbers of people in this country who would be willing to have radical changes in our economic and social system in order to make it a more egalitarian society and do away with homelessness and hunger and clean up the environment. But these people have no voice. They have no way of expressing themselves. Elections give them no way of expressing themselves.

If Occupy Wall Street can see their way to more collaboration with the union movement, then there will be a great deal of political action possible.

It is feasible for someone who comes from a privileged background to understand the privilege they have had and to use the formal political arena in a way that would disperse power and engage with people in their own lives.

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.

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.

Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.

I think voters want somebody who understands their problems. You're right that they don't expect the president to fix everything. When he's wrestling with Congress and Wall Street and the rest of the world, they hope he'll be looking at things from their vantage point.

What the working-classes really need is to be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs.

The wealthy and the connected have had a President for the last seven years. It’s about time that the rest of us had a President also.

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.

It is unquestionably the duty of the industrial classes, by means of the ballot, to speedily take the Government into their own hands, but in doing so to do justice to all.

We do not yet have a politics that is equal to the economics around us.

I'll never forget working to get my college, Wayne State University, to divest from the government in South Africa. This was the beginning of my activism, and the fight for social and economic justice has been a constant thread in my life.

If change is to come, it must come from the working class. That's why telling their story is important. That's why knowing our history is important.

Middle America is dying for a voice.

People think that we're engaged with identity politics. The truth is that we're doing what the labor movement has always done - organizing people who are at the bottom.

I'm trying to stand up so that the middle class, the working class, can finally have a say. I put them as my No. 1 priority.

This should be the message of Occupy Wall Street: We just want a chance; our government needs to give us a chance.

The Government should be taking notice of the youth of today so much more. They're trying to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor. If I sat down with David Cameron in a room, I would ask him how he feels about it and what the hell he's doing about it.

It used to be that the working class, broadly speaking - Americans who worked with their hands, who worked in factories, who were not in management - were an interest group, a political interest group. And their main spokespersons were the Democrats. Their platform was the Democratic Party. And that began to change after the 1960s. Not for black or other working class Americans, but for white working class.

I am proud to live in a country with an African-American president. But President Obama cannot be proud of the fact that the prevalence of black poverty has actually increased under his leadership. The specific policies advanced by the president and his allies on the left amount to little more than throwing money at the problem and walking away.

The American people understand that we need real change in this country, in my view, a political revolution, which says to the people on top, "You know what, you guys can't have it all."

I believe you should tell the story of injustices, of inequalities, of bad conditions, so that the people as a whole in this country really face the problems that people who are pushed to the point of striking know all about, but others know practically nothing about.

My take is that there's two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn't due to their infinite wisdom. It's because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it's like those people don't make history, it's us.