Bernie Sanders Quotes

Don't underestimate me.

[Hillary] Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.

The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world, guarantee health care to all people as a right.

I know a great country that needs to be rebuilt in terms of roads, bridges, schools. That is called the United States of America.

Let us wage a moral and political war against the gross wealth and income inequality... ...let us understand that when we stand together, we will always win.

As a result of the digital age and the decline of first-class mail, there is no question that the Postal Service must change and develop a new business model.

The goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way.

I have not heard almost anybody suggest that raising the minimum wage to the level we have in Vermont has been an impediment to our economy which is doing reasonably well ... If somebody is going to work that person has got to receive at least a wage that they can go out and live with dignity on. That's an extremely important point.

In and out of government, I've always been willing to take on complicated, sometimes unpopular, issues and work them through to have a solution.

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.

Don`t go to the dark side. Don`t go bashing immigrants or Muslims.

I would say that the key doctrine of the Sanders administration would be no, we cannot continue to do it alone; we need to work in coalition.

Country must confront what he called institutional racism. [We should] create a country which provides economic, social and environmental justice for all.

I am running for president as a Democrat. And if elected, not only do I hope to bring forth a major change in national priorities, but let me be frank, I do want to see major changes in the Democratic Party.

Rich get richer. Everyone else gets poorer. And all these guys can talk about is war and defunding Planned Parenthood.

I think, clearly, we got to work closely with China to resolve the serious problems we have, and I worry about Putin and his military adventurism in the Crimea and the Ukraine.

To my mind, what is most important now is the defeating of the worst candidate for president that I have seen in my lifetime, Donald Trump, who is not qualified to be president by temperament, not qualified to be president by the ideas that he has brought forth.

What we have seen for a very long time is large corporations shutting down plants in this country, plants that are often profitable, in order to get cheap labor all over the world. And that is one of the reasons why the middle class in this country is disappearing.We have lost our manufacturing base, and that's an issue that has got to be dealt with.

Should a small business or a large business be able to pollute the water or the air or the food? No, I hope you don't believe that.

The TPP is another corporate-backed agreement that is the latest in a series of trade policies which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, pushed down wages for American workers and led to the decline of our middle class. We want American companies to create decent-paying jobs in America, not just low-wage countries like Vietnam, Malaysia or China. The TPP must be defeated.

It is beyond my comprehension why today in America, hundreds of thousands of bright young people are unable to go to college - for one reason: that their family lacks the funding. And together we are going to change that.

It is time to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol. It is time to end the arrests of so many people and the destruction of so many lives for possessing marijuana.

As a single-payer advocate, I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost-effective way.

What I saw in Baltimore was distressing and it tells me we need stronger policies in this country.

Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign are standing up and fighting the important fights that have to be fought.

I think the wealthiest people in America are doing phenomenally well, 52 percent of all new income generated today goes to the top 1 percent.

This is America, and we are not going to throw out 11 million people in this country who are undocumented. We`re not going to turn against one of the largest religions in the world, people who are Muslim. I do not want to see Muslim kids, who feel intimidated in the country and frightened, living in the country where they grew up. That is not America. We do not want to continue the attacks against the women.

Student debt is crushing the lives of millions of Americans. How does it happen that we can get a home mortgage or purchase a car with interest rates half of that being paid for student loans? We must make higher education affordable for all. We must substantially lower interest rates on student loans. This must be a national priority.

The Republican I ran against, at the end of the campaign, had decided that I was "a friend of terrorists" and "a friend of pedophiles." That's the kind of crap they came out with. I expect that's the kind of crap they'll come out with again.

I was elected by the Democrats to be chair of the Veterans Committee, which I'm very proud of. And now am the rankings member on the Budget Committee, leader of the Democrats in opposition to the majority Republicans.

The police killings of unarmed African Americans has got to stop.

I believe what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. You remember what the title of the March on Washington was? "Jobs and Freedom." What King understood is that you have to deal with the economic issues as well as the political issues and the civil rights issues.

Even in South Carolina, as badly as we did, and we did very badly, we won the votes of people 29 years of age or younger. The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights.

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

...Poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people.

In America, we are living in a society which is moving more and more toward an oligarchic form of society where government is dominated heavily by big-money interests.

I would have put more emphasis on bringing working class people together to fight for a government that works for all of us.

The truth is we have a political system and an economic system controlled by a few extremely wealthy people. Not Barack Obama, not Bernie Sanders, no one person has the influence by himself or herself to take on this enormous array of power unless millions of people begin to work together to demand changes.

The struggle to create a nation and world of economic and social justice and environmental sanity is not an easy one. The struggle to try and create a more peaceful world will be extremely difficult. But this I know: despair is not an option if we care about our kids and grandchildren. Giving up is not an option if we want to prevent irreparable harm to our planet.

In America, we have lost millions of decent-paying jobs. That has got to end.

I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have.

You want to know the way to raise money? Put a transaction fee on Wall Street, so maybe we can curb some of the speculation and raise some money.

I think, you know, that Trump has been incredibly divisive. I think he's insulted almost every group in America. I think his policies are outrageous. But in America, people have a right to hold rallies. So I think my own feeling is it is absolutely appropriate for thousands of people to protest at a Trump rally, but I am not great fan of disrupting rallies.

People have a right to give a speech. And people have a right to protest. But I'm not a great fan of disrupting people's speeches.

I would love it if everybody in America agreed with me on every issue. I can't get my wife to agree with me on every issue, let alone the American people. It's called democracy. That's what it's about.

We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars maintaining 5,000 nuclear weapons. I think we need major reform in the military, making it more cost effective, but also focusing on the real crisis that faces America.

I wanna end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege.

Super PACs and a corrupt campaign finance system are destroying American democracy. We're proud that we have received four million individual contributions, more than any candidate in American history at this point.