Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Dick Morris

Public-opinion polls show that Americans split about evenly on civil unions. But when the words 'gay marriage' are presented, they break 3-to-1 against it.

I like Bill Clinton.

The stronger Hillary is, the weaker she is. The more she seems like a likely presidential winner, the more difficult the senate race becomes in New York. It's perfect.

No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.

Franklin Roosevelt didn't poll, because he had great political instincts. Now we have polls; we don't need instincts. But is that a change in principle? Is it a change in principle that we use a Xerox instead of carbon paper? It's of the same order of magnitude.

The beauty of our court system is that anybody can enter the court and sue. Uh, you have to be appointed to be in the Executive Branch. You have to be elected to be in the Legislative Branch, but anybody can go into court.

I will not subject my wife, family or friends to the sadistic vitriol of yellow journalism. I will not dignify such journalism with a reply or an answer. I never will.

There is a no-man's land in our politics: on the one hand, bounded by what we know to be true, and on the other hand, bounded by what the media says is politically correct. And that's where Donald Trump lives. And it's our failure to admit what we all know to be true in the guise of political correctness that fuels the Trump candidacy.

When the history of the 20th century is written, there are going to be some pretty obscure people who are entitled to sainthood. And they're not going to be well-known.

Anybody who thinks that getting a communication from a voter in your district is spam - that guy is pork. Roast pork unless he changes his point of view.

I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party's agenda and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the Left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the Right, take the idea that they have to work for a living and that there are time limits.

Bill Clinton's incredibly bold idea was to change the grant to a transaction: we'll give you something, but we demand something back; the way he would phrase it is, 'We'll give you opportunity, but you have to take responsibility.'

Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

The Democratic Party opposes tax cuts but it cannot say so publicly. Thus, it is forced to support the idea of lowering the tax burden but using class warfare rhetoric to dispute the allocation of the relief.

I love Karl Rove. He elected Bush.

Lincoln and Clinton had a lot in common in the way they were elected: In both cases, they were dark horses. In both cases, they were from small states. In both cases, they were not the favorite for their parties' nomination.

The macro of any negotiation is that the only time you can cut a deal is when both sides are hurting. If either side is - is well and feeling happy, you can't get a deal. Then they go for victory. You need - if they're willing to settle for things the other side can live with, it's because they're hurting a little bit.

As Bob Dole found out, you can't keep a positive image while being your party's mouthpiece in Congress. That's why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president.

Spontaneous combustion of grassroots politics is the future.

Anybody else who's gotten the president of the United States elected, tell me you are better than I am at it.

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

The old rules and the old methods of winning are gone.

Washington is a mean town where human sacrifice has been raised to an art form.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have one central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get re-elected, use the '04 primaries and general election to clean out the underbrush of competing Democratic candidates, and proceed unimpeded to the '08 nomination.

We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.

Sometimes nationalism can be jingoistic - even fascistic - but it can also be a constructive impetus that helps to unify a nation. Those whose nationalist critique of parties finds resonance with masses of voters can acquire vast power. We can only hope that they know what to do with it.

I didn't do what they said I did. I may have done enough so that I don't know if I can prove my innocence.

The Iraq War marked the beginning of the end of network news coverage. Viewers saw the juxtaposition of the embedded correspondents reporting the war as it was actually unfolding and the jaundiced, biased, negative coverage of these same events in the network newsrooms.

I think that the reason Clinton chose Gore was that he was an example of what Clinton was like. He was kind of almost like the yellow magic marker that you use to highlight the text so that you can really remember what are the most salient features of it.

'Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines.

It is true that the top quintile is getting richer while the bottom is getting poorer, but the bottom is not the same people. There is, fortunately, a constant churning at the bottom as new immigrants move in and those who used to be on the bottom begin their long, thrilling upward climb to the American dream.

The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.

In fighting scandal, the key is not to overreact.

In Canada the cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the U.S. because of rationing of medical care. It takes an eight week wait to get radiation therapy for cancer.

The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television.

Any Democrat who squirms on the tax-cut issue in the primaries has no chance ' zero ' to win the nomination. Each will have to take the “pledge” to oppose the Bush tax cuts. Thus, Bush will have succeeded in creating a situation where anyone who can win the nomination can't win the election. Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

I think that really, when we look at this whole process, we can come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat, that fundamentally all Democrats are Democrats.

You cannot cover the 50 million new people Obama seeks to cover without more doctors and nurses. But the administration and even the Blue Dogs in the House have proposed nothing to add to the supply of medical services even as they plan vastly to increase the demand by covering new people.

With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.

If you're going to be a sexual predator, be a Democrat.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.

The problem: Democrats have to drop their stupid class-warfare rhetoric. With 74 million Americans owning stock in one form or another, anything which helps them can't be derided as a sop to the rich.

More and more, the Democrats are not merely inconsistent, wrong and/or misguided - they are the worst of all possible things you can be in Washington: irrelevant.

Truth is that which cannot be proved false.

The financial interdependence of the world's banks is like the interlocking alliances that predated World War I.

Obama has paid and will continue to pay dearly for betting on his stimulus package. Because of it, the Bush recession is becoming the Obama recession much faster than it would have had he adopted a more gradual approach to solving economic problems. By jumping in immediately, as he did, in order to increase government spending and pass eight years of Democratic dreams in one day, he made the public expect a solution.

Only dramatic cuts in the federal deficit, a rollback of regulations that cripple small and community banks, a cancellation of future tax increase plans, a big reduction in federal spending, repeal of Obamacare, freeing manufacturing from the prospect of carbon taxation and unleashing out domestic energy potential can solve our problems. But Obama is not about to undo his legacy of disaster for the American people.

There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in thirty seconds.

The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady.

The stagnation of the Japanese economy in the past 20 years is eloquent testimony to the fact that government usually gets it wrong. Sometimes it makes the wrong decision because it fails to anticipate the market (as Japan did when it downplayed laptop computers and stressed mainframes).

Despite romantic fantasies about caring candidates who learn of America in donut shops, most politicians rely on media to teach them what concerns the average person.

Much of the DOE green energy lending program is a scam. It is a slush fund of pork for paying back campaign contributors.

The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.

How, voters will ask, can we cover 50 million new people without any new doctors or nurses? The answer is to ration health care, with the U.S. government deciding whom will get hip and knee replacements, heart bypass surgery and all manner of medical treatments. And what does rationing mean? It means that the elderly will be denied care, which they can now get whenever they want it.

Every donation received is a potential negative ad. Vetting money is just as important as raising it.

Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden - a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Take whatever position you want, but do take a position, because once you do, ample money awaits you on either side.

Barack Obama has fatally undermined our currency, our solvency, our financial stability, and - ultimately - our economy all to spend money that has had no economic effect!