Top 181 Quotes & Sayings by Mitch McConnell - Page 2

A lot of us were wondering, what is Trump really going to be like? He used to support Democrats and have various views earlier in his life about politics.

I don't think it's all that unusual for a new president to want to get along with the Russians. I remember George W. Bush having the same hope.

The Senate is not the sort of place where instant gratification, I should say, is very likely.

I thought the Pence selection ought to reassure the right-of-center voters that a Trump administration would be a right-of-center administration.

I think that winning the White House is about more than just entertaining a large audience.

The American people gave us a new majority in 2014.

We need to be honest with the public.

Nurses told my mother that I was going to be OK. They thought I could walk without a limp and without a brace. And we stopped in a shoe store on the way home and bought a pair of low-top saddle Oxford shoes, which was sort of a symbol that I was going to be a normal little boy.

America's a land of second opportunities.

No matter how unusual a personality may be who gets elected to office, there are constraints in this country. You don't get to do anything you want to. So I'm very optimistic about America.

I do think that the Constitution and the traditions of this country constrain all of us - those of us in Congress and those of us in the White House - from some of our impulses, shall I say, that we'd like to pursue.

My first memory in life was my last visit to Warm Springs.

What I have said is, when the American people elect divided government, what are they saying? I think they're saying we know you have differences of opinion on big things.

We're not Democrats first. We're not Republicans first. We're Americans first. We're patriots first.

Everybody has barriers to overcome, some more than others. I don't want to act like I'm all that unique. America's full of stories like mine. This is a special country with enormous opportunity for those who don't quit.

Don't fall in love with the map. The map doesn't win elections.

We did the two-year extension of Bush tax cuts in 2010. We negotiated the Budget Control Act in August of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal at the end of 2012, which saved 99 percent of Americans from a tax increase.

The people who would call me an obstructionist overlook some inconvenient facts.

Almost without exception, President Obama begins serious policy discussions by explaining why everyone else is wrong. After he assigns straw men to your views, he enthusiastically attempts to knock them down with a theatrically earnest re-litigation of what you've missed about his brilliance.

I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman.

Back during the campaign, there were a lot of questions: Is Trump really a conservative? A lot of questions about it.

I certainly would like to see the war on coal come to an end.

I think we need to respect the wishes of voters. They have been busily at work making these decisions in primary after primary after primary.

America being a force is a lot more than building up the Defense Department.

We all got here from somewhere else going back in our lineage. And I think these gratuitous attacks on Americans who got here recently or whose parents got here recently need to stop.

The border is way more porous than it should be, and I think we'd be open to discussing anything that enhances border security.

People are genuinely excited about taking the country in another direction.

I think we know enough now to know that Donald Trump is doing the same kinds of things that Jeb Bush would have done or Marco Rubio would have done or Mitt Romney would have done.

I always think a debt ceiling is a good tool to carry something.

The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate's traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president's judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward.

The Russians are clearly a big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.

You know, 'Professor Obama' has been a label applied to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. He's a very smart guy. But I think he'd be, you know, better served not to spend so much time trying to impress us with his particular position on an issue and understand that there are things upon which we simply have a disagreement.

I think I'd like to be an owner of a Major League Baseball team.

If the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone covered, that's one of the many failures.

Some contend that, by fulfilling our promise to the American people, we're somehow trying to go back to the way things were before ObamaCare - which we all know is untrue.

I'm not going to comment on White House personnel selections.

We need to bear in mind that we don't have religious tests in this country, and we also need to remember that some of our best allies in the war against Islamic terrorism are Muslims.

I just want to remind everybody that this is an extraordinarily resilient country we live in.

President Obama had two Supreme Court nominees in his first term. There was no filibuster against them.

As President Obama reminded us, we're all on one team.

I think it's a time to be sad about what's been done to the United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world.

It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent.

I don't in any way think the American people rejected the Republican Party, or we'd be in a lot worse shape than we are.

I'm optimistic that none of my members in the end want to be responsible for the status quo on Obamacare.

The implication here is that those who came to America legally over the years are somehow second-class citizens.

Almost never does a candidate with high negatives have much of a coattail effect.

I ran for president of the student council at my high school in Louisville. And ran against a guy who I thought was better known and little bit better student and managed to win.

No matter what a candidate for president may say during the campaign, once someone is sworn in, they are constrained by the Constitution - about what the Constitution allows and doesn't allow, what the law allows and doesn't allow.

My job is to try to protect jobs in Kentucky now, not speculate about science in the future.

I don't think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.

I don't think there should be a litmus test on judges, no matter who the president is.

In the last 100 years, three presidents suffered big defeats in Congress in their first term and then won reelection: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the most recent example, Bill Clinton.

If there's any country in the world that doesn't deserve sanctions relief, it's Russia.

I'm not going to critique every utterance of the president.

Do we need to tighten restrictions on people coming into the country? I think there's a good argument for that, but a kind of broad ban is a bad idea, and, of course, many American Muslims are great sources of information as we seek to look for domestic folks who might be engaged in trying to promote terrorist activities.

I think it's a big mistake for our party to write off Latino Americans. They're an important part of our country.

I hope in the end that people will remember what Reagan said: that if he could get 80 percent of what he wanted, you call it a win and move on.

The country is yearning for a change. I'd rather take my chances on somebody new, particularly with regard to the Supreme Court.

Trump was able to convey - oddly enough a message from a billionaire who lives in Manhattan - a genuine concern for people who felt kind of left off, who felt offended by all the political correctness they see around them.