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.

We do have evidence the [Donald] Trump campaign was working to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.

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.

We have built something [a nuclear stockpile] bigger than we can drive.

The [Donald] Trump campaign turned on a dime instantly as soon as those WikiLeaks dumps started.

October 7th [2016], indeed, WikiLeaks released its whole new dump. A whole new bunch of e-mails and documents, this time from [Hillary] Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, e-mails that U.S. intelligence say were hacked by Russia. Apparently, again, they were waiting for the best possible timing on the release.

I don't feel passionately about politics, i'm not a political person. Is it easy for me to get fired up about someone's position on climate change? No, it's not. On most of these issues, I can see both sides.

Flint and its lead contaminated water are now the focus of sustained national attention including political attention.

I feel like I have more in common with conservative people who have activist causes in their hearts and who are interested in electoral politics than I do with somebody who doesn't care, doesn't have any political interests, doesn't know what policy is, and doesn't think any of it matters to them. If you care, we're actually going to have a basis of conversation. We might supplementally get along very well, and that might be complicated and fun in a way that is more constructive than you'd expect.

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

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.

My idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.

[Dan fried] is the department`s foremost Russia expert and he, too, is now leaving at a time when arguably the State Department needs it most, the State Department will not have the benefit of his insight going forward.

I loved being on the radio. Being paid to talk? It's like being paid to eat.

The Democratic Party likes to remind people that the Russian force around that was very strong, remarkably strong.

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.

Ben Carson also denounced [Donald] Trump`s ban all Muslims proposal saying we do not and would not advocate being selective on one`s religion.

I have a constitutional weakness in which I am very easily distracted by flashing lights. If there is a TV on in the room, I can't have a conversation with you. I won't eat, I won't sleep, I'll just meld with my couch.

When it starts to seem like you have popped into bed with a specific party, it makes it difficult for people to believe you are not doing someone else's bidding for them.

Francois Hollande is the president of France. He got all sorts of accolades for his leadership in France after the Paris attacks.

Liberals say that we are secular country with a majority of Christians, absolutely.

One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.

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.

[Tom Cotton] has been an absolute champion of the idea of getting rid of Obamacare, scrapping the Affordable Care Act.

There are some political issues where mainstream press attention only hurts. We think about activism as being this generic model of consciousness-raising, then hopefully media attention, attraction of new people to your cause, building public support for your cause, then decision-makers reacting to that change in public opinion. That's true for some types of activism, but it is not true for all of them.

If you're working on better conditions for prisoners, if you make that a popular issue and you invite mainstream media to weigh in on that subject, you're going to end up with a much more regressive public-policy environment than if you approach it in a quieter way. It's not because the public is stupid, it's just that people with only a cursory interest in something are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. That's impossible to explain in a cable-news media... it doesn't make sense.

The whole straight talk thing, which John McCain kind of turned into a slogan at one point in one of his presidential campaigns, what that is, is a symptom of somebody who has no time for messing around. Because he`s trying to get stuff done constantly.

It is hard to stay patient about policy matters where everybody agrees about what needs to be done and then it just doesn't happen, like reforming the immigration system and getting rid of family immigration jails and closing Guantanamo and criminal-justice reform. All these issues, there is basically consensus. There's no rational objections whatsoever, but it can't happen because of other stupid steps we have to take in politics.

The way that we make dumb decisions and discriminatory decisions is by employing stereotypes about groups of people. We don't see people as fully human when other people speak for them.

Senator John McCain is unlike anybody else in not - not just in the Senate but in American politics. He`s unlike anybody else in American life. In his public life and in his heroics in war. He`s a singular figure in American life and American history. I think for everybody who has ever had a political difference with him that just instantly evaporates in the face of wanting the best for him because of cancer.

I'm in favor of outing when people have demonized or scapegoated gay people for their own public gain. I don't think just being a Republican is reason enough.

Formula 1 racing had a personal scandal right up at the top of its governing body that was so weird, that was so flagrantly salacious and bizarre, that I think it not only reassured American racing fans that Formula 1, yes, really is kind of weird.

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

There had been a proposed plank for the platform that said the Republican Party believed the United States should support Ukraine in any way that we could up to and including providing them weapons, so they could fight off Russian incursions into Ukraine.That was the proposed plank in the Republican Party platform. The [Donald] Trump folks didn`t care about anything else.

Britons still commemorate the Battle of Cable Street in London. There are still pop songs in Britain that reference Sir Oswald Mosley and his black shirts.

I don't think vodka is useful. I think it's for people who don't like alcohol, in which case, you probably shouldn't be drinking it.

I will say that Bernie Sanders are the opposite end of the spectrum from Donald Trump. We see him leading right now in the Republican Party in an intractable way.

You may never have heard of Joseph Overton and his proverbial window but you most certainly have heard the Republican presidential campaign in 2015 year not just flinging the window open but shattering all its glass.

Internet's been down most of the day [at work]. Doing research by just asking everyone what we remember to be true. What could possibly go wrong?

The idea of the Overton Window of using people on the political fringe to change the terms of acceptable debate, that`s an idea that`s been hugely influential in conservative politics since Joseph P. Overton thought it up, making radical ideas seem acceptable by advocating for the unthinkable.

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.

" [Donald] Trump may indeed be a little fascistic."New York Times wrote.

What I`m starting to think of as the mythical beast of the Republican establishment, which is the sort of inchoate idea that we keep talking about what they`re going to do and it never seems to have much impact or be manifest in very visible ways, obviously, it is one thing for Donald Trump to have taken a shot like he did early in his campaign at John McCain, calling him not a war hero.

Senator [Tom] Cotton has campaigned on wanting to kill Obamacare. He voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act back in January, but he now says, despite these marathon all-night sessions going on in the House, Republicans need to do better, they need to start over, they need to come up with something that the Senate says will actually reduce prices for insurance and keep it affordable.

Social security isn’t a ponzi scheme. It’s not bankrupting us. It’s not an outrage. It is working.

After Donald Trump`s ban all Muslims proposal, candidate Jeb Bush reacted by calling Mr. Trump unhinged. However, that would be the same Jeb Bush who says we should only allow refugees into this country who are Christians.