Negative Campaigning Quotes

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.

None are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy of blame themselves.

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant.

Hillary Clinton spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue. They're untrue. And they're misrepresentations.

Remember this about any slander. Denial only emphasizes, and gives added importance to falsehood. Let it alone and it will die for want of nourishment.

If Romney would go ideological in explaining Obama, it would help. We gotta stop the, 'He's a nice guy' stuff. Nice guys don't do what Obama is doing. Nice guys don't say and do and act the way Obama is saying, doing, and acting.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

I think that there was a lot of undisclosed money that came into South Dakota, driving a message to paint me as a Washington partisan, which I don't believe that I am, but it was a message that resonated, after pounding it away for a number of weeks.

I've never, in my whole 30 years in office, run a negative ad.

Mudslinging – In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point.

I'm not the inventor of negative campaigning, but I'm an ardent practitioner.

With all their attack ads, the President is just throwing away money...and he's pretty experienced at that.

Candidates who went into an election with negatives higher than 30 or 40 points just inevitably lost.... Drive up the opposition's negatives.

I would not want to be a politician... Let me tell you this: If I was campaigning, and I go against my opponent and he started attacking my character, and I leap over the table and choke him unconscious, would that help my campaign?

Certainly we're going to continue to see those commercials that I call 30-second drive-by shootings. And they're going to have a lot of money to do it. But we're going to combat it.

[Describing his opponent:] ... a cross between a hyena and a mongrel ... begotten in a graveyard at midnight, suckled by a sow and educated by a fool.

Reveal Richard Nixon … lay him and his motives bare … destroy him in his shot for the Presidency.

Super Tuesday is the day on which most states hold their primaries. Its darker partner is Dirty Tricks Thursday: the Thursday before an election when candidates release scandalous stories to garner bad publicity for their opponent: the timing means the accused will have little time to refute the allegations.

WARNING: POLITICAL ADVERTISING CAN LEGALLY DISTORT THE TRUTH.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

[In a political contest,] the first guy who defines the other, wins

When I left the secretary of state office, I had a 69% approval rating. Once I start running for office and all the incoming you know is battering away, people are going to say, "Hey, wait a minute - what's that mean, what's that mean?" I get all of that, but I don't think we do any service to our country or the voters if we descend into the kind of insult fest that he seems to relish.

I think it's going to be a doosey. I mean, talk about a fistfight in a whorehouse.

A coalition of groups is waging a massive propaganda campaign against the president of the United States. an all-out attack. Their aim is total victory for themselves and total defeat for him.

Politics is rough and tumble everywhere, and many women recoil from that negative aspect of it - the nastiness, the charges and counter-charges.