Bernie Sanders Quotes

You cannot be a party which on one hand says we're in favor of working people, we're in favor of the needs of young people but we don't quite have the courage to take on Wall Street and the billionaire class. People do not believe that. You've got to decide which side you're on.

You cannot be a party which takes money from Wall Street, which is not strong on the pharmaceutical industry, which is ripping us off every day, which is not strong on health care in taking on the insurance companies, which has not shown a desire to stand up and fight the economic establishment, and then tell working families that you are on their side. People see through that.

The left is back, and it's the only path we have to get out of the spot to which the right has sunken us. Socialism builds and capitalism destroys.

Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate excesses.

A populist is someone who sees politics from an economic perspective rather than an ideological perspective. I’m a populist. The only thing that really matters is who is gets screwed and who is doing the screwing.

I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom. I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.

I volunteered to join Mr. Trump's campaign because he is a champion of working families, not Washington-Wall Street elites.

The Democratic Party has become the party of the coastal elite, and the Republican Party is the party of the working class and that average American citizen who's been struggling over the past eight years with Obama in the White House.

Populism is at its essence just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.

I've heard [Bernie] Sanders comments, and it's really caused me to wonder who's left in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Under his definition, [Barack] Obama is not progressive because he took donations from Wall Street; [Joe] Biden is not progressive because she supported Keystone; [Jeanne] Shaheen is not progressive because she supports the trade pact. Even the late, great Paul Wellstone would not fit this definition because he voted for DOMA.

My father was an ardent socialist for many years.

Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople.

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

I am a registered Democrat who is determined to return my party to the proletarian principles of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era.

Now that the day of reckoning has arrived, they cry socialism!

A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created.

I think you can have a Left that isn't culturally conservative talking about lunch-bucket issues.

The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues, and that's not their concern.

It's time to put the national interest before the interests of Wall Street.

Unlike the Marxists, I have no mind block against the U.S.

We're seeing quite a lot of people who really would like a return to class-based politics.

After World War I the resentment of the working class against all that it had to suffer was directed more against Morgan, Wall Street and private capital than the government.

We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people.

However illusionary the beliefs and doctrines of traditional European Socialism, it reflects therefore genuine social and political tensions.