Chris Matthews Quotes

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.

[Donald] Trump faces the perhaps accumulation of all the wealth in the world on the head of [Marco] Rubio, because Rubio's the last gasp of hawks and establishment Republicans.

America's the one country in the world where anybody who comes here does better than where they came from.

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.

You can't be loved for long if you're not feared.

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.'

Jean [Kennedy Smith, JFK's sister] told me she thinks the whole sports angle has been overplayed, that politics was central to him. This nonsense that he only went into politics because his older brother Joe was killed is not true. He was determined he was going to be in politics, but he would have waited his turn.

If you want to play a game, go to where it's played and find a way to get in. Things happen when you get in the game.

That is the voice of God because its the voice of truth and experience.

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

B.B. King will be remembered for his impressive skills on the guitar, that King defined the blue genre.

Presidents aren`t supposed to spit, at least not obviously.

I think we all [americans] think we're a special country. But the question is, what - what call does that give us?

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."

What happens to conservatives when they get near the White House? How come they only seem to be talking the good talk at, say, the Senate level, when they don't have to run the show?

Isn't Hollywood - and I love movies - a lot of it about a big lie?

I truly believe that America`s greatness and billions and billions of dollars of our wealth flows away because China doesn`t treat us fairly.

The holy father John Paul II made a profound impact wherever he went. And, of course, his trip to Boston was one of the earliest ones. But I must say every time that I met the holy father and mentioned Boston, he would immediately say, rain. So, it made quite an impact on him, too.

Campaign manager Eli Gold played by Alan Cumming on "The Good Wife" describing an old maxim in politics, don't commit to a decision before you have to. And that rule appears to have worked brilliantly for Democratic candidate front-runner Hillary Clinton, who has avoided taking a position on the president's trade agenda and has remained out of the ugly public spat with the progressive wing of her party. She has also not taken a position on the Iranian - on the talks.

And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war.

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

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

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

Whether the Bushes, or whoever they are, they always end up in the end with the money and the ability to really blow away anybody who dares challenge them.

People in a state like Pennsylvania, especially in the middle of the state, as you say, want the focus on repairing the state. Pennsylvania is a mess in terms of infrastructure. They don`t want to blow up bridges over there. They want to build them here.

The more failure you can accept, the greater your chance of success.

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.

It's a fact of life that positive reasons don't always get people to vote. You need some negative reasons.

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.'

The fact is he [John F.Kennedy] always had to have somebody around besides Jackie [Kennedy]. Whatever their relationship, he wanted company. I think it gets back to all those years in a hospital bed.

The old rule in Massachusetts politics is shape of the field determines the winner. If you have got a whole bunch of hawks, all the way from [Mike] Huckabee all the way across to [Chris]Christie, that covers the spectrum on every other issue, all hawks, all hawks, and one guy out there saying, not me, Jimmy Carter won that way back in `76. I know it`s 1,000 years ago.

A new poll out taken by a Republican group that shows most Democrats prefer socialism to capitalism. Those terms don't mean what they did maybe 40, 50 years ago.

Just come in there and stand before a live crowd, thousands of people at an Ivy League School, like Eleanor Roosevelt said, always do what you're afraid to do.

The FBI had a right to review that. And they did and they found Hillary Clinton not in any criminal violation.

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

[Hillary] Clinton was able to assemble a winning Democratic coalition out here, beating Sanders among African-Americans, women, among women, and voters from union households, so, unions, women, African-Americans.

Nothing is as important as the biggest day in your life.

Any jackass can talk about bombing Iran.

Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.

When I hear Rand Paul, who is much younger, saying wars are verkakte, I agree with him.

The real difference between relationship politics and transactional politics is loyalty. [Barack] Obama doesn't seem to expect it.

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.

It [smoking] was like an aphrodisiac. Actors would say let's have another cigarette on that great scenes, and they'd blow smoke in each other's face.

I do think that Hillary Clinton risks looking like she's imitating Elizabeth Warren when she starts doing it. She'll look like Elizabeth the second. And nobody is electing anybody a second of anything.

When lightning strikes you want to be there, right there in the room. You, not everybody`s going to say yes to you. Just don`t ever say no to yourself, ever.

The President Barack Obama said if we get out of this business of trade expansion, we turn it over to the Chinese. This brings us into partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim countries.

I am no longer going to go along with this idea that we're going to keep spending and borrowing and taking over and raising taxes, that I'm going to do everything I can to change things.

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.