Top 228 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Shields

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.

I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.

Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.

The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work; you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.

When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.

What you have is two men seeking the White House; they're both products of prominent New England families. They both went to private boarding schools. They both went to a prestigious university.

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.

George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.

Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.

Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command, save one, has stood with him.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

George Bush is trying to play it both ways.

You've got people who didn't serve with John Kerry saying they did serve with John Kerry in the boat. With George Bush, we can't find anybody who did serve with him.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

I think Donald Trump is obviously the more colorful, the more flamboyant, the more dominant personality.

Tim Kaine reminds me of - Peter Hart.Tim Kaine is a good neighbor. He's kind of the dependable, you know, friendly, helpful. And, you know, he would be over there. He would give you a hand if there were a problem at the house.

Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command save one has stood with him.

The other thing that has changed - and this is more detailed to CPAC than the general Republican Party - is they have always been an outsider, Ann Coulter, sort of protest style, a little ruder than most Republicans. And this goes back all the way to [Ronald] Reagan.

I believe devoutly that the national election is the closest thing we have to a civic sacrament of democracy. And I really do think that heed must be paid, and when people make a decision, those who are on the other side, including me, accept it, for that reason.

I thought Mike Pence, upon reflection to me, came across a little bit like your favorite aunt who refuses, in spite of first-person evidence that grandpa has been drunk and disorderly in public, that, says, no, no, grandpa would never do that, even though grandpa is being taken off in handcuffs.

Immigrants have been the sustenance and the survival and the treasure of America.

There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.

I think part of Donald Trump's appeal is that he's a guy that does cut corners, that he's the guy that does get deals and maybe does break a speed limit. I think there was sort of a roguish, rascally, but I get things done even if I break the rules.

The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.

I do think that Republicans are flirting with their tax cut, which has always been the narcotic of Republicans, that they in fact have to at some point, with any remote pretense of candor, abandon any pretense of a balanced budget.I mean, they talk about - because they are going to finance the tax cut by tax cuts. That's how they're going to do it. And I do think that the will is there right now in the Congress to act. I think they will be as close to unity as you will see on Capitol Hill this year.

White working-class voters or working-class voters have felt abandoned, have felt, in many senses, disparaged by the political leadership of America.

Let's give the president some due here. They had a mess, and he fixed it, and they mobilized a lot of authority, and they did it.

There's nothing wrong with being organized.Things that change history tend to be organized.

When you have got military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, they're intended for one purpose. And that is to inflict as much damage on human beings in as short as time as possible.

I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump was born without the embarrassment gene or the moral reservation gene.

Drones are sort of the perfect weapon for a country that doesn't want to go to war. It only - there's no fingerprint. There's no direct involvement. There's human beings killed on the other end. You never see them. You don't have to worry about them. You don't have to meet their widows. It's sort of an antiseptic warfare.

It doesn't have to be the same line that we have had for the last 40 years, because that clearly isn't working on any level. But you have got to have a pretty clear line on this crucial issue.

The White House, as Warren Harding said, and I think accurately, is an alchemist. We find out the strengths, the weaknesses and the smarts and the dumbs of whoever those occupants are under the pressure of the presidency.

You have to understand that Republicans are on lockstep on one issue. They will not raise taxes. Democrats are in lockstep on another issue, pro-choice in all cases on abortion.

I have my disagreements with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.

We had the clip of [Donald] Trump saying: I'm not president of the globe. I'm president of the United States.[Ronald] Reagan would have never said that. [Dwight] Eisenhower would have never said that, because he would have said, yes, I'm president of the United States, but it's in our interests to be securing a world order.

Donald Trump is an independent presidential candidate who ran on the Republican label. He really did. He took it over. He transformed it into his image, in his likeness.

The pattern of American presidential elections is that the more optimistic candidate, whether it's John Kennedy and let's get America moving again, Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America, or Barack Obama, yes, we can, always wins, or nearly always wins.

When you think of pristine preservation of America, you immediately think of Tulsa and Oklahoma.

The organizing principle of the United States defensive foreign policy had been opposition to the Soviet Union. There is no more Soviet Union.

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.

The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

The fact is that it's the most dangerous place to be on the political scale is to brand those on the other side as racist. That's the atomic bomb. That's the nuclear weapon of an American.

The stated objective and the mission of Vladimir Putin's Russia is to destabilize the North Atlantic Alliance.

Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.

George Washington was the president who could never tell a lie, and Richard Nixon was the president who could never tell the truth. Donald Trump is truly the president who can't tell the difference.

Gone is any mention of American exceptionalism. I happen to believe that twice, three times in the 20th century, the United States saved Western democracy, both World War - both World Wars and the Cold War.

Dan Coats, retiring senator from Indiana, a mild-mannered man, a former United States ambassador to Germany, former congressman, said of Ted Cruz he's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen.And he said, you can quote me on that.