Rachel Maddow Quotes

A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket. I don't walk under ladders. I have items of clothing that are lucky for me. That rotates, but I am luck-oriented.

Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.

The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway.

If you're someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that's a sign of a life lived honorably.

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.

I have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.

Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.

I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

Fascism is not just a word. It`s not just a way to insult someone with whom you disagree. It is a specific thing. It is a specific form of far right politics that involves a sort of narcissistic cult of superman action around the leader of the party.

Humans are ambitious and rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best, not our worst.

Hopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about.

I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me.

Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if — as the war ends, or at least starts to end — if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there — Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

Bernie Sanders are the only person who talks about the kinds of things that might be driving people to support Donald Trump in such large numbers in the Republican Party.

Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.

If you took a cracked pot and you cracked that cracked pot, you'd be approaching the level of cracked pottery we are talking about here.

In the little town where I live in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, we now have a 'Public Safety Complex' around the corner from what used to be our hokey Andy Griffith-esque fire station.

Chris Christie who proposes accepting Syrian refugee orphans under the age of 5 because they may not be vetted well enough. You can`t trust them. The 5-year-olds might it be terrorists. After all, they`re from Syria.

I don't have any option. I'm not going to be less gay or more pretty. I can't try to have less personality or fewer controversial opinions.

Pentagon dollars are essentially seen as a different kind of funding that doesn't have to stand for itself and make an argument for itself in the house of Congress.

We all now have to decide whether we`re comfortable using this word, weather fascism is too over the top to use in this context of our politics right now in our country or whether it helps because it`s accurate, to basically describe this as America`s Sir Oswald Mosley moment.

Americans are incredibly religious as a nation, and we have gotten that way by having the government stay out of religion and say religion is a private matter. The government doesn't take sides. Public schools don't promote or denigrate any religion.

After we graduate tonight, we no longer have to let society happen to us. We get to create our own.

It is sometimes hard to know what Sarah Palin means, just on a day to day basis. Sometimes it is hard to follow what she is talking about.

If the military contractors are out of Afghanistan, Karzai is out 15 minutes later.

Fascistic leaders are aggressively macho and chauvinistic. They are xenophobic about people who they portray as outsiders or some sort of threat to the nation or as weaklings they can denounce.

Gay people - generally speaking - have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can.

I still think of myself as the new kid, even though I've been on the air for two and a half years. But my job is the same as it ever was, which is to make 9:00 P.M. as good as I can.

At a time when America should be doing everything we can to lead the fight to defeat ISIS and other radical jihadists, Donald Trump is playing right into their hands.

Russian government was in contact with multiple [Donald] Trump campaign sources while they were doing [attacks]. Russian nemesis in the American government, U.S. State Department, CIA, are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power.

CNN recently ran a sort of roundup article on why some conservatives say that Trump talk is fascist. The roundup included this tweet from Iowa Republican radio host, very influential guy in Iowa Republican caucuses, Steve Deace. Quote, "If [Barack] Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump, every conservative in the country would call it what it is - creeping fascism."

Donald Trump announced his no Muslims are allowed to come to the United States plan and that led to one of the greatest tweets of all time from New York Times columnist. Quote, "OK, I concede I picked the wrong day to modestly walk back my Trumpism as fascism column."

My life is better with every year of living it.

Don't focus on what I'm wearing. Focus on what's coming out of my face.

When people get to speak about themselves and the things that matter to them, on their own terms, we see them as who they are. They can't be reduced to objects of derision.

We are willing to follow leaders only to the extent we believe they call on our best, not our worst.

Marine Le Pen is more careful than her dad was about saying things like denying the Holocaust, right? But it`s the same politics. It`s the same modern anti anti-immigrant, anti-and the Semitic, xenophobic authoritarian modern pseudo-fascism.

In the rest of the world though, particularly in Europe, the most popular form of racing is not stock cars. It`s not NASCAR. It doesn`t look anything like NASCAR. It`s Formula 1.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is a holocaust denier who was convicted and fined for dismissing Nazi concentration camps as a, quote, "Detail in History." But he kept running this anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, populist unapologetic xenophobic far right party in French politics.

Marco Rubio calling [Donald] Trump`s ban all Muslims proposal, quote, "offensive and outlandish," it`s the same Rubio who was one upping Trump`s promise to shut down mosques. Mr. Rubio was saying he would shut down not just mosques but any place where Muslims might be radicalized - cafes, diners, any place.

[Donald] Trump is a fascist and that`s not a term I use loosely or often but he has earned it.

We got the first WikiLeaks publication of documents hacked and stolen by Russian government sources from the DNC, from the Democratic Party, and they started publishing those stolen documents from the DNC right before the Democrats started their convention.Good political timing if you`re trying to help [Donald] Trump and hurt the Democrats.

David Petraeus, the best known American general of his generation. After commanding the American war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he was serving as CIA director when he stepped down suddenly following revelations that he`d had an extramarital affair. That same investigation that turned up evidence of the affair also eventually turned up evidence that General. Petraeus had passed classified information to his mistress.

Fascism allegation [to Donald Trump] is not coming from the left. This is coming from the right. It`s coming from inside the Republican Party and from within mainstream conservative thought.

Fascist is not just an epithet. Fascist is a proper noun that means a specific thing. It`s a real thing. It`s not always referring to ancient history.

With the Republican Party`s presidential front-runner proposing that all Muslims should be banned from entering the United States, that perhaps there ought to be a national registry of Muslims, that we ought to looking into Muslims having to carry government ID cards that state their religion, now, the word fascist is being used to describe this ascending and leading Republican politician.

When Ronald Reagan spoke a thing aloud, he believed it forever and for always. By the time he started running for president, in 1976, he had already developed an unwavering and steadfast faith in the correctness of whatever came out of his mouth.

What's insulting to the American people, the Senate, to this whole process is that the Republicans, with all other nominees, have said Democrats are being obstructionist for wanting to see documents, for wanting to see a paper trail, for wanting to get questions answered in the judiciary committee hearings, and now all of a sudden, the Republicans want those things for this.