Bernie Sanders Quotes

We're going to stand with working people. We're going to take on the billionaire class. We're going the take on the drug companies and the insurance companies. We're going the take on Wall Street. That's where I think the future of the Democratic Party lies.

I have taken on virtually every element of the big money establishment, whether it's the Koch brothers, and the big energy companies, whether it's the industrial complex, whether it's Wall Street... I have taken on the drug companies. I have taken on the insurance companies.

We have a Democratic Party that cannot defend the American people from the worst Republican Party in history because it's a Democratic Party of war and Wall Street.

I was there in Washington in the '90s. It was pretty bad then. It's much worse now [in 2015]. And that vicious cycle is you've got again big corporations, executives, Wall Street, very wealthy individuals in both parties who are calling the shots.

If we're going to tackle the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, along with so many other issues that are at the top of our community's mind, we need to reform our system and make it work for the people, not special interests and corporations.

There are party leaders, big corporation, Wall Street. There are very wealthy individuals who kind of represent where the Democratic Party, the official Democratic Party was and to some extent still is.

There is a reason why these people [from Wall Street] are putting huge amounts of money into our political system. And in my view, it is undermining American democracy and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families of this country.

Herman Cain answered the Wall Street protesters, and he had a message for these protesters. He said, 'If you don't have a job, if you're not rich, don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the banks, blame yourself.' And a nation of out of work teabaggers said, 'Yeah! Hey, wait a minute.'

I think we obviously need health care. Of course we need health care, but I think that it's gone too far the other way, and I don't understand it. It's gotten so complicated. The minute they made a deal with the drug companies, you know something isn't kosher here.

If Martin Luther King looked at the Obama administration and saw an intimate connection with Wall Street, he'd be very critical. If he saw drones being dropped on innocent people, he'd be very critical. If he saw rights and liberties violated by secret policies of the government, of the kind we've seen by the National Security Agency, he'd be very critical.

Wall Street has enormous power over the Republican Party, enormous power over the Democratic Party.

Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones the direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that?

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex.

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master…Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

We're not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs while it forecloses on Florida and is himself a stockholder in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together to understand what this is all about. People matter more than Wall Street.

I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street.

I believe the Democratic Party has got to be firmly on the side of working families, taking on the big money interests, who today, to a very significant degree, control our economic and political life.

I am very proud to be the only candidate up here who does not have a Super PAC, who's not raising huge sums of money from Wall Street...

The ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power.

I've lived long enough to see the triumph of zealots and absolutists, to watch money swallow politics, to witness the rise of the corporate state. See the party of working and poor people become a sycophant of crony capitalism. Watch the union of church and state become fashionable again. Witness the coupling of news and entertainment. See everyday people cast overboard as the pirates and predators of Wall Street seized the ship of state. I didn't drift; I moved left just by standing still.

[Steven] Lerner's strategy is, "How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to be rich?" This is what his objective is, and he believes that Wall Street's wealth has been stolen.

America is run by corporations, it is run by banks and Wall Street. That's why we can't get guns under control. It's because all these lobbyists don't want gun control, they don't want us to have strong environmental safety guards. Young people can become aware of that and they are the most powerful lobby. With a click of a text, you can have millions of people voting for one person.

[Steven] Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore - the redistribution of wealth and the return of '$17 trillion' stolen from the middle class by Wall Street - is to 'destabilize the country.

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.

From my perspective, we actually have to have a stronger, bolder economic message that's not just for white working-class voters, but for people who don't go to college who are white, black, Latino, or wherever. We have to communicate that we care about Detroit and Appalachia, and people suffering in both are problems for the country and a problem for the Democratic Party, not just one or just the other.