Top 1200 Candidate Quotes & Sayings

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected.

Donald Trump is a candidate who divided his own party more deeply than any presidential candidate has before.

If ever we deserved a candidate at this moment in our culture, that candidate is Donald Trump.

When 3 million more people vote for a presidential candidate, but that candidate still loses, the system sucks. Period. It's broken. I think it's broken if the candidate loses by one vote and still wins. Losing by 3 million votes, but still winning the election, is preposterous.

When I evaluate a candidate, one of the most important criteria is what I call “the first derivative.” Is this person learning? Is this candidate moving forward, or have they stagnated.

I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I'm not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests... I am the candidate of the people...

If you want a candidate who is led the fight against Obamacare, who will lift the burdens on small businesses and bring back jobs, I'm the only candidate in the race with that proven record.

Vote for the candidate you believe would be the best candidate. That's the way it should work.

We have a presidential candidate who's deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn't make sense to me, because if that was any other person, you'd be in prison. So what is this country really standing for?

The conservative candidate who ignores moderates is as misguided as the moderate candidate who ignores conservatives.

I'm not a Blairite candidate, I'm my own candidate.

Race is still a powerful force in this country. Any African American candidate, or any Latino candidate, or Asian candidate or woman candidate confronts a higher threshold in establishing himself to the voters ... Are some voters not going to vote for me because I'm African American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn't vote for me because of my politics.

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.

It's all about media culture and people on television, and that feeling comfortable, friendly, or warm toward a candidate [in the elections] is a reason people would emotionally attach themselves to that candidate. I get the mechanics of it, I just hate that it's true.

All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.

There is no evidence at all that a voting booth was hacked or one person's vote in America was taken from Trump candidate to Clinton candidate.

African-Americans who might have disagreed with candidate Barack Obama's left-of-center politics voted for him in 2008 because electing a candidate with brown skin was too historic an opportunity to miss.

I contribute to public candidate campaigns, and there's a federal limit on how much you can contribute to each individual candidate. I obey the law in that regard, and I feel like I'm doing it properly.

Senate races are different from House races, in the sense that they are more candidate-driven. The higher the office - that is, I mean, governor, senator, president - the more important the candidate.

I see a big difference between the Republican candidate and the Democratic candidate.

I propose a full day of live one-on-one debates on unannounced issues, with no aides to help or reply. Each candidate would be paired with another candidate for seven 60-minute sessions.

One in a while, you discover a presidential candidate who has the potential to change the political conversation, to elevate key issues in voters' minds, and disrupt and transform a tired Republican brand. Once in a lifetime, maybe, you will have an opportunity to support a transformative candidate who can do all of these things, and win.

It is harder to lie in an interview. A good interview - and it can be polite - is not a one way street like a candidate controlled ad. An interview is not programmed by the candidate and so the candidate can't be exactly sure what will be asked.

When you have Candidate A saying the sky is blue, and Candidate B saying it's a cloudy day, I look outside and I see, well, it's a cloudy day. I should be able to tell my viewers, 'Candidate A is wrong, Candidate B is right,' and not have to say, 'Well, you decide.' Then it would be like I'm an idiot.

It's hard to be a son of a candidate. It's hard to be a brother of a candidate. I think it may be the hardest thing to be the dad of the candidate.

Rubio is clearly an open-borders Republican. He is the Chamber of Commerce candidate, the 'more is better' candidate, and the amnesty candidate.

With the case of [Mike] Pence, giving a little aurora of likability to a candidate, a lead candidate who's a little lacking in that department.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

When I ask candidates to tell me about their weaknesses, I am hoping for a wise, honest, and self-confident answer. When I hear a candidate rationally admit a weakness, I am impressed. When I hear a candidate duck the question with language straight out of a book, I start thinking about the next candidate.

We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in the American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.

It is often constructive to meet with a candidate for a particular office, but I believe what is most important is the candidate's track record.

Who can guarantee that he [Alexander Milinkevich, a Belarussian opposition presidential candidate] is the most promising candidate capable of competing with the incumbent president?

There is a system in BJP as to who would be projected as a chief ministerial candidate or a prime ministerial candidate. The proper forum to take decision is only central parliamentary board.

One of the favorite tricks of the Democrats is to try to get the Republicans to pass over their strongest candidate and nominate instead a candidate who will be easy to beat.

I will not vote for a candidate who thinks you can 'pray away the gay;' I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that he has more rights to my uterus than I do; I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that it's okay to dump toxic waste in the ocean.

As an American, no one expected Donald Trump to ever be a serious candidate for President. I don't think he even expected to be a serious candidate. He wanted the free media he would get.

African-Americans who might have disagreed with candidate Obama's left-of-center politics voted for him in 2008 because electing a candidate with brown skin was too historic an opportunity to miss.

I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count.

My first race was '99/2000. At that time, I was at 'Salon,' and I was basically their campaign reporter, so I would just jump around from race to race, candidate to candidate.

But feminism isn't served by simply promoting women over men. The winner needs to be the best candidate for the job, not the best candidate of a certain gender.

Is Romney a tea party candidate? I'd probably say that he's the least of the candidates running for president right now that would be considered a tea party candidate.

Perfect is not on the menu. Nobody is going to be your ideal candidate. You can't dream somebody up out of nothing that's going to be the perfect candidate, so you do have to pick between a series of bad choices.

Whether you voted for me or not, going through the Democratic process had made me a better candidate. I am a smarter, better candidate.

There is no requirement whatsoever for a security clearance for a candidate. The mere fact that a candidate is anointed by its party at a convention - that is all that is required. And it's not up to me or the administration to determine candidate suitability for these briefings.

You will vote for first choice candidate whether or not you think he'll win. But I'm saying you may find yourself for a candidate, a middling candidate, a candidate you don't think very well of, really. And you really don't like to avoid a catastrophe. Well, maybe that's a good thing. You can argue that back and forth.

What's the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.

I really believe that anybody on the Left or the Right that tries to invoke the teachings of Jesus to say they should vote for this candidate or that candidate, I think they're stretching Scripture.

You can unite behind a candidate and a vision for America without rejecting another candidate and their vision, because in real life, opposed to party politics, we Democrats are on the same side.

The challenge with a candidate like Donald Trump is he's not a conventional candidate, and he doesn't run a conventional campaign, and he doesn't answer questions in a conventional way.

You can identify me as the freedom or the liberty candidate or the limited government candidate.

I do think we should be focused on substance and record. If you want a candidate who opposes amnesty, who opposes citizenship for the 12 million people here illegally, I'm the only candidate in the race who opposes that.

Mudslinging - In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point.

I guess I don't have a candidate who makes my heart go pitter-patter the way I wish it would. I'm thinking, here's an African American candidate - yes! And here's a woman candidate - yes! Why can't I get behind either one of them? Don't tell me I have latent sexism or racism that I need to confront. I don't believe that. I think we are so burned by the current situation that we want somebody that it isn't possible to have. We want someone who definitely looks like the messiah.

I will not vote for a candidate who thinks you can 'pray away the gay,' I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that he has more rights to my uterus than I do, I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that it's okay to dump toxic waste in the ocean.

Typically, the view of party leaders is that primaries are best avoided. Better to coalesce around a consensus candidate early, help that candidate amass a mighty bankroll, and focus the attention of volunteers, activists and other stakeholders on the general election.

As a president I will be like the candidate that I am, a respectful candidate, a rallying candidate, a normal candidate for a normal presidency, at the service of the Republic.

Our democracy if self-cleansing. If you don't like it, be a candidate, or support a candidate.

It will be about which candidate, which of the two candidates remaining, is best suited to make a positive difference in the lives of North Carolina families, and I submit to each of you tonight that I am that candidate and Elizabeth Dole is not.

I believe Ted Cruz is the candidate that's the answer to my prayers. A candidate whom God will use to restore the soul of America.

Jeb Bush was supposed to be the establishment candidate, but he didn't catch on. And the extraordinary thing about this Republican primary is that the establishment, moderate wing of the party has sidelined itself. They're not coalescing around one candidate as they have in the past.