Top 214 Quotes & Sayings by Lawrence O'Donnell - Page 2

If you have five weeks to write an episode of television or seven months to write a movie or several years to write a book, each of those things is going to be better than a live television show.

I've never done anything that I need to be doing tomorrow. If someone says, 'We no longer want you here,' I won't show up again. It was true at 'The West Wing.' It was true in the Senate.

I spent a few years after college as a Boston public school teacher and I loved it. But I was never committed to it, committed to it as a career.

Bill O'Reilly is a socialist. He is in favor of Medicare, he is in favor of Social Security. Those are socialist programs.

Around the courthouse when defense lawyers are chatting about their cases, the only question they ask each other is can you put your guy on the stand? Those conversations always assume the defendant is guilty. The question is just about the degree of difficulty in presenting a defense.

I'm a very slow writer.

Every single television product has the ambition to chase ratings, every one of them. Many have other ambitions, for many, ratings are not #1. But my experience on TV, and on the entertainment side, has been entirely ratings-based. When I look at TV I look at ratings. And I never second guess ratings. Never.

If in the script there is an argument about gun control, the most precious document you could produce at 'The West Wing' that week is a passionate, intelligent case against gun control. We know how to do the other one.

Political talk on TV has degenerated so much. You can say something complex on 'The West Wing' and you will not suffer a screaming interruption by three other panelists.

Show business comes with wonderfully long vacations, like the life of a college professor.

Being American means you never have to say you surrender.

I've lived a life of unplanned freelance employment.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

It's hard to get me outraged.

I have no broadcasting training. No one's ever said to me, 'This is how you read a Teleprompter.' They just pointed to it and said, 'It's over there.'

NBC has created a monster and it is called Donald Trump.

The thing about live TV is that it simply has to be done, there's no space for procrastination.

The worst teacher in America could never do as much damage as the worst police officer in America. But the right wing has never even been slightly curious about evaluating the job performance of police officers.

Big city mayors don't play well with voters outside their city anymore. Just ask John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Kevin White, Tom Bradley, Dick Riordon. Rudy Giuliani is no exception.

I've never understood the value of putting someone on television to lie, knowing that they're going to lie ahead of time, knowing that that is their deal: to lie ahead of time. There is zero news value in that.

To expose a first draft to anyone's ears other than your own is indecent.

All writers are forced to live within deadlines, and deadlines determine how good they can be.

There are people who hate me, there are people who like me, and they're both right. I think people hate me for the right reasons, which is my politics and what they discern to be my personal attitudes.

Every cable news channel was a very big business success before Donald Trump started lying about Barack Obama's birth certificate. And they were all making more money than they knew what to do with then and more money than Donald Trump has ever seen in his life.

I discovered, to my surprise, that writing for live television made me a faster writer.

Practical European socialists have embraced the idea that the government has a role in healthcare and in supporting strong transportation systems that do not depend entirely on individual motor vehicles. And it turns out we're all socialists now, and there are very few Americans who understand that.

Staten Island is set off completely by itself in its own world, and that's one of the fascinating things about it, dramatically.

Teachers who have committed their lives to the classroom deserve better than our politics has given them.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

When you get off to an African country like Malawi - which is pretty removed from everything and pretty seriously off the grid - and you see the struggle of life that goes on there, it's a completely different thing than what happens here.

Shepard Smith has frequently been the lone voice of reason on Fox News.

The George Wallace campaign in 1968 was the model for the Trump campaign in 2016.

There's times where you can watch television and say, 'Look at that cheesy thing they're doing for ratings,' and you're right.

At 'The West Wing,' I cast newscasters, and when you put out a casting call for actors, half of the people who come in are real local L.A. newscasters. Each time, I ended up hiring one of them, because they're better at it. Big surprise! A newscaster is better at playing a newscaster than an actor is.

Anything anyone wants to say about me is fair. There's not a single thing that any viewer has ever said about anything I do on television that has bothered me in the least. And every single person has the right to hate whoever they want to hate on television, whether it be singers, actors, pundits. That's the deal.

I always knew I'd be leaving government someday. I just didn't know when. There was something about knowing that it was temporary that left me in writerly observational mode.

I've never designed anything in my life to accommodate MSNBC. I've had to squeeze it in.

In the summer of 2007, I was in New York for some meetings and... I rented a car and just drove to Staten Island to take a glance and remind myself about it. I ended up staying a couple of days there in a hotel and I've been all over the island several times since.

The great thing about going to Malawi is I have no contact for at least a week with anything that's happening back in Washington.

I don't think Republicans are evil. I think they mostly have a different philosophy of government than I do.

According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Donald Trump`s tax plan is going to increase the national debt by more than 50 percent over ten years.

Forty four percent of Republican voters believe President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States. They believe he is not a legal citizen of the United States.They believe his presidency is unconstitutional.

The longer incompetent people delay in doing what they`re doing, we`re always better off whenever incompetent people are delaying what they`re going to do.

I will never forget the day in Washington when I met John Lewis by phone when he called me to ask about something. And the phone just shook in my hand. I couldn`t believe that John Lewis was on the other end of the line.

Donald Trump has been getting favorable comments from white supremacists, from American Nazis. And any explanation of Donald Trump`s rise that does not include those facts is a false analysis.

I think the fact of the matter is this is a tough moment for democrats. But it`s also exciting to see so many people out there mobilized.

I believe we stand strongly against having the tax code used to make the income disparity in America any worse than it already.

It is highly likely that one of the two of them [ Donald Trump and Ted Cruz ] is going to be the nominee. This is a - look here, what is this - what this is really is a prescription for remaking the Republican Party.

Donald Trump did his usual softball interview on "Fox News" where the interviewer agreed with Trump that using that Yiddish vulgarity is going to be OK for him.

The [Donald] Trump plan would increase the national debt a little over a $1 trillion a year, the Trump plan would reduce taxes at all income levels with, of course, the biggest tax cuts going to the richest taxpayers as they always do.

I was the first person Donald Trump threatened to sue on Twitter.

My Worst Political Move of the 2015 Year. John Boehner inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to address the joint session of Congress.

What I do respect is that Donald Trump knows that it is an emotional appeal and it might be emotional appeals that I don`t - can`t expect.But he knows that you have to appeal to the voter, and that`s why I may be wrong. I made a big deal about there`s no way he`s going to win.

I don`t think their voices are going to change at all. And it`s what Democrats have always been saying. We are stronger together, but we`re going to fight like heck if anybody tries to divide us.

You have two people who I would classify as extremists. Donald Trump because of his behavior and Ted Cruz because of his views, leading the Republican Party.

Fifty four percent of Republican voters believe President [Barack] Obama is Muslim. And 66 percent of Trump voters believe President Obama is Muslim. If you hear anyone trying to explain the rise of Donald Trump without including that fact, then you`re hearing someone who doesn`t know what they`re talking about.

Melania Trump did not object or make a speech when her husband retweeted this. "If Hillary Clinton can`t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America."

If there is a big bill to do infrastructure improvements and it is about working people, let`s do that. But let`s absolutely fight with every ounce that we have to protect healthcare and make it even better.

The truth is that people - many people are concerned about this, but this is not the first time in America this has happened. There were a significant number of people who didn`t want Jewish refugees before World War II, or even during World War II.

On Twitter, Donald Trump has called me a "poor journalist, stupid, a very dumb guy, the dumbest political commentator on television, and the dumbest man on TV."