Robert Reich Quotes

I think there's such disgust and frustration because of Trump that people see me as the vessel for that frustration. They see me as the person who can give voice to what they're feeling.

I've got three little kids at home, and I'm trying to save this country from itself. I'm not here to play political power games, and I've had enough of people playing political power games, and this has just gone on too long.

I am president now, and tired of being kicked around.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

They think that, if we were just smart enough, we'd be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell 'em, and I do tell 'em, Oh, we're plenty smart, oh yeah - we know what's goin' on. And we don't like what's goin' on. And we're not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.

Like most thoughtful people who watch what's going on in Washington, venting is very necessary.

Any man who has ever tried to use political power for the common good has felt an awful sense of powerlessness.

Ambition characterizes and distinguishes national officeholders from other kinds of human beings.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

I’m angry with what’s happening to our country and angry with myself that I can’t do more.

Because exploration is not science driven, you've got to ask what is it driven by? And it's driven by politics.

I think people in America have had enough, and Donald Trump's the change agent.

It's a sad thing about politics that most people get power too late, in that they differ from ladies of easy virtue who get their pleasures too early.

We shall have to begin all over again. [Taft hoped that] the Senators might change their minds, or that the people might change the Senate; instead of which they changed me.

So in a strange way, even though Trump is a billionaire, what he's been saying is, "Everything's rigged, it's all corrupt and I'm not corrupt because I'm my own billionaire." Both [Donald] Trump and Bernie Sanders made a lot of hay by making that argument.

The problem with politics isn't the money; it's the power.

It will make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

A soldier in Iraq said that he wanted to "punch Donald Rumsfeld in the gut, then in the face" or something like that. He wanted me to use his name, but I knew he'd get in trouble, so I didn't. However, I felt it was a great quote because it summed up the frustration of those guys at that moment.

I think there are people out there who just kind of say, let's repot the plant. Let's give somebody else a chance. And it's not just anger or disappointment in their lives, it's the sense of, let's shake this up. And no one is shaking it up as much as Trump.

It's tempting to remember that the Tea Party had a peak and then the Republican Party establishment sort of beat it back down. And so these things are won in a day.

Washington has a mysterious power to turn perfectly reasonable, wholesome, well-meaning human beings into equivocating crooked gasbags.

Don't get mad. Don't get even. Just get elected, then get even.

Politics is social work with power.

I didn't want my next U.S. senator to be someone who was going to go up there and do the same stuff people have been doing. But I guess our argument is it's okay to be angry and upset at Washington.