Chris Matthews Quotes

The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.

Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, 'Well, that can't happen.'

I'm so glad we had that storm last week.

I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'

Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.

How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he's an Islamist until he's made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al-Qaida. Is that the point at which you say, "This guy is dangerous?" That's not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?

Toastmasters changed my life. They really did. Put me on the stage. I don’t know what I would have done without that positive boost.

It looks to me like the Republican Party`s in no mood to give them [voters] a reasonable choice with this clown show going on right now from the likes of, well, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump. What a duo.

The president of the United States, whoever it is, deserves a certain level of reverence and respect just because of the office he holds.

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

Everything he's done is clean as a whistle. He's never not only broken any law, he's never done anything wrong.

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, 'We are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something.' I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together.

You don't say, like the Bush crowd, 'I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not.'

And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.

Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.

I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.

My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.

I don't sense an [Barack] Obama party. I think politics is transactional for him.

While we may not mind being used, we resent deeply being made to feel discarded.

Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not.

The world is not checking in with us to see what skills we've picked up, what idea we've concocted, what dreams we carry in our hearts. When a job opens, whether it's in the chorus line or on the assembly line, it goes to the person standing there. It goes to the eager beaver the boss sees when he looks up from his work: the pint-sized kid standing at the basketball court on the playground waiting for one of the older boys to head home. "Hey, kid, wanna play?"

Sarah Palin is an empty vessel ready to be filled by ideology that she doesn't even understand, and that is really scary. Nothing is more frightening than an empty vessel in power.

We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.

My audience is much more center right, or centrist.

Right now, the old guys, the old farts, if you will, are still running the show, and the women haven't gotten their place yet at all.

Just look at who won the third debate between Bush and Gore. I knew Bush won, because people liked him more. People just didn't like Gore. But all the journalists thought Gore won big, he cleaned the guy's clock.

It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.

I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'

We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.

The big lie is that the people who make a lot of money were the only ones that worked hard.

I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

Republicans woke up Sunday with an undeniable reality. Donald Trump's the clear front-runner now for their party's nomination. Trump, celebrated, of course, his big win in South Carolina.

Hillary Clinton follows a cardinal rule in politics - don't commit to a decision before you have to.

People don`t like getting dirty or living in an environment that`s been contaminated and is covered in hazardous waste.

I've never heard anybody [of president's candidates] talk about the poorly educated.

Once having said no to Donald Trump, Mitt Romney can't go back and say, I changed my mind, I'm bowing to the pressure from you.

John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom.

The fact that younger people are more inclined to socialism may well come with the fact that so many young people's first experience with capitalism is as a debtor.

The overall campaign launch is designed to break through the clutter and reach out to consumers. At the end of the day, consumers are the ones who benefit from the convenience and value never before seen in a free checking account.

A couple of Donald Trump people, including his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, and of course, Dr. Ben Carson, have both come out in the last days, hours, practically, and said they believe President [Barack] Obama is a legitimately elected president of the United States.

How much he was shaped by being in the hospital so much as a kid. Because he was sick, he was a reader, and because he was a reader, Kennedy had heroes. Because he had heroes, he went into politics. [Kennedy liked Sir Walter Scott, King Arthur's knights, and biographies of political leaders.] If he hadn't been sick, he might have been like everybody else in the family, a jock.

While Jeb Bush finds himself mired in the muck of an intramural fight in his own party over his remarks about the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton is sticking to the low-key strategy, and it looks like it`s working.

Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle.

You could see Newt Gingrich, who`s a member of Donald Trump`s country club, already getting together and talking about the new episode of "The Apprentice," with the poor kids in the city.This was a very smart thing to do. He shows that he is the grown-up in the Republican Party.

The last person to be beatified by Pope John Paul II was Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 2003.

I never wrote off [Donald] Trump.

While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

I always thought of him [Jack Kennedy] as a prince, with a charmed life. He was a guy who was sick and in horrendous pain all the time - who would say, "I wish I had a few good days."

We are trying to pick the next president, not review the birth of the current president.