Bernie Sanders Quotes

The difficulty that we have, and I don't mean to be rude here, is that we have a president who is a pathological liar. So, could it be true? I guess it could be. Is it likely to be true? Probably not. And I think what happens in our own country and around the world, people don't believe much of what Trump says, and when you lie all the time, the problem is sometimes when you're telling the truth that people are not gonna believe you.

Nine months ago, our campaign began. And when it began, we had no political organization, no money, and not much name recognition outside of the state of Vermont. A lot has happened in nine months. And what has happened is, I think, the American people have responded to a series of basic truths, and that is that we have today a campaign finance system which is corrupt, which is undermining American democracy, which allows Wall Street and billionaires to pour huge sums of money into the political process to elect the candidates of their choice. And aligned with a corrupt campaign finance system is a rigged economy. And that's an economy where ordinary Americans are working longer hours for low wagers. They are worried to death about the future of their kids. And yet they are seeing almost all new income and all new wealth going to the top 1 percent. And then in addition to that, the American people are looking around and they see a broken criminal justice system. They see more people in jail in the United States of America than any other country on earth, 2.2 million. We're spending $80 billion a year locking up fellow Americans.

The bottom line is that in the United States we spend an enormous amount of money for a health care system that performs poorly. It's time for a change a real change.

I am disappointed by the president's decision to continue pushing forward on the disastrous trade agreement that will cost American jobs, harm the environment, increase the cost of prescription drugs and threaten our ability to protect public health. This treaty is opposed by every trade union in the country and virtually the entire grassroots base of the Democratic Party. ... Secretary Clinton made her strongest statement to date against this deal. In my view, it is now time for the leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the House to join Secretary Clinton and go on the record in opposition to holding a vote on this job-killing trade deal during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond. We need to defeat this treaty and fundamentally rewrite our trade policies to create good-paying jobs in this country and throughout the world and end the race to the bottom. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure that the TPP does not get implemented.

The unprecedented global challenges that the United States faces today—climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, massive economic inequality, terrorism, corruption, authoritarianism—are shared global challenges. They cannot be solved by any one country acting alone. They require increased international cooperation—including with China, the most populous country on earth. It is distressing and dangerous, therefore, that a fast-growing consensus is emerging in Washington that views the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum economic and military struggle. The prevalence of this view will create a political environment in which the cooperation that the world desperately needs will be increasingly difficult to achieve.

I do write my own speeches.

In the last thirty years, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, it's gone in the wrong direction. ... All that money that has gone from the middle class to the top 1%, I think it should start coming back to the people who need it the most.

In an extremely difficult and unsettling time – inflation, the pandemic, the heating of the planet, gun violence, attacks on abortion rights, the war in Ukraine – the American people want their elected officials to stand up to powerful special interests and fight for them. Well. The Democrats control the White House, the Senate and the House – and yet that is not happening. They are being held accountable for their inaction, and they’re losing. Is the situation hopeless? I don’t think so. But in order to turn the situation around, Democrats need a significant course correction. And, in doing that, they can learn a lesson from the 1948 campaign of Harry Truman. In 1948, nobody believed Truman had a chance to win that election. Strom Thurmond and the segregationists had bolted the party and Henry Wallace, a third-party candidate, was taking progressive votes away from Truman. Truman responded with a simple and straightforward strategy. Unlike today’s Democrats, he took the fight to the Republicans. He didn’t let them hide behind their whining and “do-nothingism.” He exposed them for what they were – tools of special interests. He made them vote on critical issues. And, time and again, they voted against the interests of working families. Truman showed the very clear difference between the parties – and he won.

What has to be understood is the economic problems of Nicaragua are not unique in Central America or in the third world. In fact, as poor as Nicaragua is, one of the nice things that I saw is that as a result of government policy, direct government policy in terms of the distribution of food, people are not hungry, by and large. I think it’s fair to say. You know, it's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don't line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.

But let’s be clear. Opposition to this bill is not just limited to the pharmaceutical industry. At a time when millions of senior citizens and people with disabilities cannot afford the home health care, dental care, hearing aids, and eyeglasses they desperately need, private health insurance companies are strongly opposed to this legislation. They are spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat this bill because they do not want Congress to expand Medicare to provide dental, hearing, and vision benefits and they apparently do not want seniors to receive the quality care they need in their own homes. And it’s not just the health care industry and big drug companies. The fossil fuel industry is launching a major advertising campaign to defeat this legislation because it seems to be more concerned about protecting their short-term profits than addressing the existential threat of climate change. At a time of record-breaking forest fires, drought, rising sea levels and extreme weather disturbances the fossil fuel industry has, since 2000, spent more than $2 billion on lobbying to protect its special interests and prevent the federal government from making cuts in carbon emissions to protect our planet. Further, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality – when the two richest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent – the billionaire class is vigorously opposing this legislation because it wants to prevent Congress from making the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations finally start paying their fair share of taxes. The corporate elite seem to love the idea that billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than nurses or teachers and that, in a given year, there are dozens of profitable corporations that don’t pay a nickel in federal income tax.

The cost of hospital treatment for the coronavirus amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. Tragically, we have already seen people who have delayed treatment due to concerns about cost. In this pandemic, lack of insurance will lead to more deaths and more Covid-19 transmissions. As long as this pandemic continues, Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one in America who is sick, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this national crisis. Obviously, Congress must not only address the pandemic crisis, it must also act with a fierce sense of urgency to effectively deal with the economic crisis as well. In the last two weeks, a record-breaking 10 million people filed unemployment claims – more than during the entire 2008 Great Recession. Frighteningly, the St Louis Federal Reserve projects that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32%. While such estimates may be a worst-case scenario, the reality of the pandemic has taught us that worst-case scenarios are what we must plan for. For the sake of working families all over this country, we must be prepared for all contingencies. We cannot wait before taking the bold action that is necessary. In my view, it makes a lot more sense to prevent the collapse of our economy than figuring out how we put it back together after it crumbles. Simply stated, that means that every worker must keep receiving his or her paycheck and benefits during the crisis. In the recent emergency relief bill, Congress appropriated over $25bn in grants to the airline companies so that 2 million workers in that industry will continue to receive their full paycheck and benefits through 30 September. And that is exactly what we must do for every worker in America. This is not a radical idea. It is similar to what France, Norway, Denmark, the UK and other countries are doing.

Terrorism is a very real threat, which requires robust diplomatic efforts, intelligence cooperation with allies and partners, and yes, sometimes military action. But as an organizing framework, the global war on terror has been a disaster for our country. Orienting U.S. national-security strategy around terrorism essentially allowed a few thousand violent extremists to dictate the foreign policy of the most powerful nation on earth. We responded to terrorists by giving them exactly what they wanted. The war on terror has also been staggeringly wasteful. According to the most recent study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, it will have cost American taxpayers more than $4.9 trillion through the end of this fiscal year. Factoring in the future health-care costs of veterans injured in post-9/11 wars, the bill will be closer to $6 trillion. And even after this enormous expense, the world has more terrorists now, not fewer. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there were nearly four times as many Sunni Islamic militants operating around the world in November 2018 as on September 11, 2001. That is no coincidence: the way the United States and its partners have prosecuted this war has caused widespread resentment and anger, which helps those terrorists recruit.

Wall Street won’t change until we make it clear that no bank is too big to fail and no CEO is too big to jail.

while extreme right wingers are regular guests on various talk shows, almost no progressive voices are heard on prime-time TV. The most important "story" of the last twenty years has been the precipitous decline in the standard of living of America's working families. Television, which provides instantaneous coverage of earthquakes thousands of miles away, seems to have "missed" this issue.

It looks like the is prepared to tell the billionaire class they cannot have it all. It looks like the South Bronx wants to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1%. What this campaign is about is creating a political revolution. All over this country I am seeing millions of people standing up, fighting back, saying, “enough is enough.”