Top 214 Quotes & Sayings by Lawrence O'Donnell

I don't for one second spend any time thinking about carefully ingratiating myself with someone for the future.

One of the things that I see on Twitter is that people think they know what you think about things you haven't discussed.

The Trump view of immigration defies our history. Immigration is a transaction that has historically benefited the country.

I grew up a few years after John Kelly in an identical neighborhood in the other side of Boston and I went to high school in John Kelly's neighborhood. I know the neighborhood John Kelly comes from, I know the culture.

I majored in economics in college. Certain things were just out, like chemistry or biology, or science or math, that was just out of the question. That's just an aptitude impossibility, I couldn't have done it.

Never once has Republican world said hey, maybe we should look into how police officers are carrying out their solemn public responsibility to serve and protect. No - no right wing website in America is investigating or will ever investigate how well police officers do their jobs.

I'm one of those actors who finds the part in the wardrobe.

There are plenty of odd couple Congressmen who have roomed together on Capitol Hill, but I have never heard of a chief of staff who rooms with his boss. It is beyond unusual.

The West Wing' is an extremely naive entry into politics and political thinking.

What we're doing on 'The West Wing' is fictional. It's not a place to learn about politics or government. Has there ever been a fundraiser on 'The West Wing?' No. So right there, you're in Disneyland.

I was an extreme leftist-anarchist. Now, I guess I'm a European socialist who's locked into American citizenship, without complaint.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

I love some of the most hateful tweets. I think they're very funny. In the negative attacks on me, there are frequently some real displays of humor. I want to reply, but I won't, because there are all sorts of other people making serious points that I care about, and I don't want them to be discouraged.

The Republican base - the Evangelical get-out-the-vote troops - are going to be devastated when they discover how many closeted gay Republicans were involved in policing Mark Foley in the House of Representatives.

I never like the TV or movie Harvard characters. The fact of the matter is that most people who go to Harvard went to public schools and weren't in final clubs. I didn't even know that final clubs existed until I was a senior.

In pre-election polling, momentum is more important than position, and in primary polling, national numbers are useless.

I tend not to look at Twitter in the morning; I try to force myself not to, for time management. I'll look at it on the way to work.

Everything I ever suggested for 'The West Wing' comes from my work with Senator Moynihan.

No one outside of the Black Caucus would be happy to see Alcee Hastings in a chairmanship. I first saw Alcee Hastings in his impeachment trial in the Senate.

People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been very busy educating America about just how much socialism we have, from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public universities, and how much we love that. The truth is that there is no pure socialist or capitalist economy on earth.

I think a lot of people on both sides have extremely naive views of what government is capable of.

Henry Kissinger spent years negotiating the terms of our surrender there and ended up with a deal that he could have gotten on the first day he went to work in the Nixon White House - the Americans leave and North Vietnam wins.

I can be as crazy as anybody and go over lines I should not go over.

If a website has something I should know, somebody is spinning it around Twitter and I'll see it there. Before I would look at Huffington Post and Slate every day, now I follow them on Twitter.

I am not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.

If I write a cop show, it's not up to me to decide how different it is from 'Law & Order.' I had screenwriters go on and on and on about how their cop show isn't like any other cop show on TV. They made very good points, and it absolutely doesn't matter. It's entirely up to the audience to decide.

Republicans believe that tax cuts can build buildings, all sorts of miraculous things. A lot of Democrats and liberals believe that spending more money in a school is going to up the test scores, no matter how much evidence there is that it won't, or hasn't.

Successful presidential campaigns follow a two-part strategy. For Republicans, Richard Nixon described it as running to the right in the primaries and running back to the center in the general election. For Democrats, the idea is to go to the left in the primaries, then to the center.

I don't trust news sources, and neither should other people. They should use them in the same way that they use medical opinions and get more than one on the important issues. Trust is the most precious thing you could possibly give to another person. But to institutions? Publications?

The Iraq Study Group's report is a very respectable cover document for American surrender in Iraq.

I went to Harvard College, grew up in Boston, and went to high school in Boston.

What MSNBC is, what cable news prime time has become in the shows that get the ratings, is the oped page of the newspaper.

There's something about the power of influential correspondents tweeting something that has become the fastest way to get a story moving. It will turn into something much faster and much bigger than it would have.

I have no idea what I would be, I really don't have the vaguest idea what I would be, if my father had remained a Boston cop. I don't have any idea what I would have thought the horizon was.

Where I come from, no one settled their disagreements with bets, because no one of us had any money to bet.

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it.

I ended up going to Harvard College, which was about as likely in my neighborhood as going to the moon.

I think what has worked very well is Rachel Maddow just being Rachel. I don't think there's anyone who could give Rachel advice about anything.

Roger Ailes's effect on politics was much longer-lasting than Richard Nixon's, even though Nixon was elected president twice.

The 'West Wing' writers room would not have come up with the idea of running a presidential campaign in which an African-American gets elected. Because the realism view would have said that's not possible.

Many chiefs of staff are close, very close, to their bosses on Capitol Hill.

America never formally surrenders, so we have to call surrender something else. In Vietnam, we called it Vietnamization.

Charlie Rangel is angry about the Iraq war, the one that Henry Kissinger has told us we can't win. Thanks, Henry, but most Americans figured that out before you did. Rangel saw combat in Korea. Kissinger has only seen combat on TV. That might have something to do with why Kissinger thinks our troops should stay in Iraq even though we can't win.

There was the slow discovery for me in the early '80s that Republicans are people too... That Republicans are perfectly reasonable people... and that Republicans can be right about something.

Publicly, defense lawyers cling to the text book theory that the defendant has no burden of proof and that no negative inference should ever be taken when a defendant doesn't defend himself on the witness stand.

All men in makeup are playing a part.

Desegregation came very painfully to the Boston schools, long after John Kelly finished high school, and the pain of desegregating Boston schools was visited entirely on the students who looked like Frederica Wilson.

I do strive to be the Andy Kaufman of TV news.

Politics has become show biz.

The United States is and will continue to be the most important country in the world, economically, militarily, intellectually. There's nothing that four years of Trump can do to stop that. What it is no longer, during the Trump years, is the leading source for better governmental arrangements between countries.

Nothing outrages and disappoints an extremist more than compromise.

There are people out there who disagree with me politically, and understand the limits of that disagreement. It doesn't mean we disagree as people on basic human needs.

You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospitals and medical research, and you can do that at the same time and still retain an ability to function.

You don't immediately adopt the values and the framework of this, the academically successful world, just because okay now you kids get to go to high school.

Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room.

I've often wondered what it would have been like if we'd had cable news during the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist.

The pundit world, having spent years in awe of Karl Rove, will never understand how bad he is at his White House job.

The First Amendment protects the news media and the news media knows how to use it. Donald Trump doesn't understand it, he's never going to understand it.

Nixon's adroit use of television in 1952 was well ahead of its time.