Top 15 Bernie Sanders Quotes

Look, at this particular moment in history, and perhaps at any moment in history, despair is not an option.

[A]nyone who wants to talk about foreign policy or, for that matter, anything that goes on in Congress, without recognizing the corrupt political system that we have and the impact that money has over what we do, really doesn't know very much about what's going on.

Our country faces unprecedented challenges today. They cannot be resolved with half-steps or compromises. There is not a middle ground between the insatiable greed of uber-capitalism and a fair deal for the working class. There is not a middle ground as to whether or not we save the planet. There is not a middle ground about whether or not we preserve our democracy and remain a society based on equal protection for all. Democrats face the most fundamental of all choices. They must choose whether to be on the side of the working class men and women who create the wealth of this country, or to be on the side of the billionaire class, and the wealthy campaign donors who hoard wealth for their own self-interest. By making unequivocal decisoon as to which side they are on in the class war, Democrats can finally enact policies to overcome uber-capitalism and the greed, inequality, and bigorty that have denied this country the promise of "liberty and justice for all."
This is the stuff of a political revolution. A political revolution that every poll tells us the American people want. The danger for the Democratic Party is not being too bold. It's being too cautious. It's time, finally, for the Democrats to recignize that good policy is good politics. It's good for the country. It's good for the world. Let's do it!

Good policy is good politics. Standing up to corporate greed and improving the lives of the majority of the American people is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do politically. Democrats used to know this. That's why the party dominated congressional elections for the last half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, too many leaders of the current Democratic Party have rejected the vision that made their party strong in the past- just as they have lost sight of what could make it strong in the future. The sad truth is that, if you boil it down, the essence of the Democratic message in recent years has been: "We're pretty bad, but Republicans are worse. So vote for us. We're the lesser of two evils!"
Given the reality of the Republican Party today- their growing attacks on democracy and women's rights, their abysmal record on climate change and the environment, their support for tax breaks for the rich and cuts in programs for working families and the poor- there's more than a grain of truth in that message. And it might be enough to win elections in the short term- as was the case in 2020, and to a lesser extent in 2022. But what it doesn't do is get to the root causes of the Democratic Party's problems, let alone the country's problems. It doesn't generate grassroots excitement or coalition building. It doesn't strengthen our democracy. It doesn't create hope. It doesn't lay out a plan for the future that's based on the shared values that will bring Americans together to achieve great things. It doesn't recognize that, when the olgarchs and the corporate world are waging class war against working Americans, the working class needs a party that will fight back. And win.

Republicans are constantly on the watch to exploit grievances. And what of Democrats? Do they counter the GOP strategies that deflect attention from the real sources of pain and frustration among working-class voters of all backgrounds? Ask yourself: What is the overall message of the Democratic president, Democratic congressional leaders, and the Democratic Party leaders? If Republicans have defined minorities or immigrants or gay people as "the enemy," and "the problem," who are Democrats calling out as the real culprits? Who are Democrats holding responsible for the pain that so many Americans are experiencing? It's not enough to simply say that the Republicans are engaging in ugly politics when they target immigrants, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. It's not enough simply to say that Trump and his followers are extremists who do not believe in democracy and the rule of law. Democrats should be making it absolutely clear that the people the Republicans take their money from, and the people whom Republican policies serve—the very rich and the very powerful individuals who seek an America where uber-capitalism defines every aspect of our economy and of our society—are the problem. There is a reason why Republicans oppose saving the planet, oppose taxing the rich, oppose regulating corporations. And oppose responding to inflation by addressing corporate price gouging and profiteerring. They are delivering for their billionaire donors and their corporate sponsors. Pure and simple. Democrats should be making it clear that they are prepared to challenge the rich and powerful on behalf of the working class. This will resonate with the American people in ways that the GOP lies never could. Unfortunately, this economic justice message is rarely if ever delivered by the Democrats. And that has a lot to do with our broken campaign finance system and Democrats' dependency on campaign contributions from the wealth and powerful.

As more and more newspapers go out of existence and vast stretches of the country become news deserts, we need to rethink how local media is maintained in order to guarantee that Americans can access the information they need to cultivate a vibrant democracy. In my view, there has to be significant public funding for diverse, competitive media at the national, regional, and local levels. That's not a radical idea. At the founding of the United States, the first Congresses provided massive postal subsidies to printers so that they could distribute newspapers. The subsidies went to all sides in the great debates of the early United States, and they fostered media diversity and discussion so intense that the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville determined, after touring the young country in the 1830s, that newspapers were an essential underpinning for "Democracy in America." Even now, almost two hundred years later, our largest media outlets enjoy massive subsidies. The public owns the airwaves of this country, yet media conglomerates claim exclusive use of those airwaves for their own economic benefit. Once they have obtained a license, they can bank whatever profits come to them from owning television and radio stations, and with the loosening of standards and regulations initiated by the w:Telecommunications Act of 1996 and industry-aligned members of the w:Federal Communications Commission, they have generally done so with little to no accountability.

Instead of focusing on the vitally important questions that impact our society, including the impact of wealth and power on decision-making, corporate media most often on gossip, trivia, and personalities—especially when it is covering campaigns and elections. Is it important for citizens to know about the lives of those who seek public office—their honesty, experience, health, family, and history of personal relationships? Yes it is. But at the end of the day, elections have to be about a lot more than personality contests. We're not going to get any kind of progress in this country if the media remains obsessed with the "issues" of who is more "likable" and whom we would most like to have a beer with. I suspect that we will not be soon returning to the three-hour Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, but the focus of campaigns must be about what candidates stand for, and what they will do to improve our lives and the world we live in. Elections must center around the needs of the people, not the petty personal fumbles of the candidates. The focus on personalities unlinks politics from the major issues we face, dumbs down serious discussions, and deflects attention from the role that corporate interests and the billionaire class play in impacting the lives of the great mass of Americans. This, in turn, narrows the frame in which governing is reported and constrains the range of options that Americans believe are available. The issues that matter most to working-class Americans—a dysfunctional health care system, low wages, poverty, deindustrialization, the abandonment of working-class communities, and growing inequality—are neglected, and only grudgingly addressed when they cannot be avoided.

The trouble with debates about public education in the United States is that they rarely have anything to do with education—let alone establishing the habits of analytical thinking and civic engagement that give us the freedom to be more than just cogs in the machinery of corporate America. For the most part, in recent years, education debates at the national level and in communities across this country have been proxy wars for right-wing strategists who see schools as vehicles to advance their divide-and-conquer agenda. Cynical Republicans like Florida governor Ron DeSantis want to argue about whether students and teachers should be required to wear masks during a pandemic, about whether LGBTQ kids should be treated with respect, about whether educators should be allowed to teach the actual history of the United States—as opposed to a truncated version in which fundamental issues are ignored and critical thinking is disregarded. Amid all the political infighting over mask mandates and Critical Race Theory, about test scores and funding mechanisms, we've losing our focus on what matters most in education; the encouragement of students to explore big ideas, to learn how to assess what makes sense and what does not, to become engaged and active citizens who live happy and fulfilling lives. For education to get focused on the real needs, and the real possibilities for students in the twenty-first century, we have to break out the mentality that considers our elementary and secondary schools merely training grounds for workers.

Research by the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University has found that employee ownership boosts company productivity by 4 percent, shareholder returns by 2 percent, and profits by 14 percent. This is a case where discarding the old uber-capitalist models and trying something new is good for workers and good for business. That's one of the reasons why I made employee ownership a big issue in my second presidential campaign. Under the plan that we developed during the campaign—and which I have since used as a basis for legislative proposals—corporations with at least $100 million in annual revenue, as well as all publicly traded companies, would be required to provide at least 2 percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20 percent owned by employees. This would be done through the issuing of new shares and the establishment of Democratic Employee Ownership Funds. These funds would be controlled by a board of trustees directly elected by the workers, and that board would have the right to vote the shares in the best interest of company employees—in the same way that other institutional shareholders vote their shares. The shares would be held in permanent trust for the workers, and so, while they have increase in value, they wouldn't be sold to speculators. But employees would benefit from the increased value through dividends paid directly to them.

Medicare for All, free college education, and expanded Social Security, along with other universal guarantees, are good ideas in and of themselves, as is explained in other sections of this book. But they are dramatically more necessary in a transition period from an old economy to a new one. The best models for that new economy will include strong unions and well-defined workplace protections. But the definition of the workplace will change radically, making guarantees to workers unpredictable as the economy is transformed. The availability of health care and education—as human rights—will be essential. If people do not have access to them, they will be forced to work harder for less. Inequality will continue to increase and our political debates will grow more desperate. That doesn't have to be our future. By embracing Medicare for All, as well as plans to expand Social Security, we can ensure that working-class people—many of whom will find themselves self-employed or working in the gig economy—will not be left in the lurch because they do not have a steady employer that provides health benefits and a pension. And in an era where people will need more training and expertise than ever before, free college education should be a no-brainer.

The decline of unions has cost American workers dearly, especially the young and people of color. No wonder so many Americans are frustrated. They are hurting, but they don't have the tools to fight back. The irony of our moment is that, even though unions are at just about the weakest point in my lifetime, public opinion polls show that they are more popular than at any time in decades. A Gallup survey done in August 2022 found that 71 percent of Americans approved of unions. That was the greatest level of support since 1965, and it was higher than at some points during FDR's presidency. At a time when the middle class continues to shrink, and more than half of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the average American knows that if we're going to rebuild the middle class, we need to rebuild the union movement. It's not just fierce opposition from the corporate world that makes union organizing increasingly difficult. It's the allies that the corporations have in the political world, where both Republicans and Democrats have pursued an anti-worker agenda. Over the past fifteen years, Republican governors and legislators in historically strong union states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana have adopted so-called Right to Work laws. These measures bar unions from collecting dues from workers they represent, making it dramatically harder for workers to collectively bargain for better pay and benefits and safe workplaces. In the South, Right to Work (For Less) laws have been on the books for the better part of seventy-five years. The name is a lie. These laws have nothing to do with giving people a right to work. They are designed to make it more difficult for workers to organize strong unions that can bargain good contracts and have a voice in politics as the local, state, and national levels. In effect, they are laws that hold down wages and weaken protections for workers, and their presence in the statute books in southern states can be traced back to the days when segregationist politicians in both parties feared their integrated unions would advance the cause of both civil rights and economic rights.

A job has to be more than just a job. As a U.S. senator and a candidate for president. I have traveled to workplaces in almost every state in our country. Along the way, I have visited with thousands of workers from all walks of life. What I've learned is that yes, of course, workers want good wages, good benefits, and good working conditions. But I have also learned that working people want more—something that most of them are not getting today. They want dignity. They want respect. They want a voice in the decision-making process. They are human beings and they want to be treated as human beings. Whether someone is working on a farm, or in an automobile factory, hospital, or school, or delivering mail or writing a book, they want to know that what they do is meaningful and appreciated. They want to have a say about the nature of their work and how it is done. No matter what the job may be, people thrive when they have re-warding work. We feel good about ourselves when we know we are making a contribution to our community, and when we have an opportunity to come up with more creative and effective ways to make that contribution. But, far too often in the uber-capitalist system that has developed in the United States, people don't get that sense of satisfaction. They feel, correctly, that they are cogs in the machine-exploited powerless, and disposable. In fact, for major employers like Amazon, Walmart, and the entire fast-food industry, the gross exploitation and discarding of workers is the foundation of their business model. In these corporations the turnover rate is extremely high as desperate workers come in, are worked too hard. earn starvation wages, more on, and are replaced by other powerless low-income workers.

As a presidential candidate and, more recently, as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I've supported the struggles of working Americans in tough times and fought to give them a greater say in controlling their destiny. And frankly, I am frustrated by politicians who talk a good line about workers' rights on the campaign trail but then fail to deliver when they acquire power. That's bad policy, and bad politics. Democrats made an enormous and far-reaching mistake in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton aligned with Wall Street to approve so-called free-trade pacts, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Workers felt betrayed, and it cost the party dearly in the disastrous midterm elections of 1994, when control of the House and Senate shifted to right-wing Republicans who cynically exploited the opening Clinton had given them. Workers understood that you couldn't be both pro-Wall Street and pro-worker. For many working-class Americans, Clinton's choice to side with Wall Street was the end of their allegiance to the Democratic Party, a trend which has only grown over the years. Democrats should have learned their lesson. But there is very little evidence that this has happened. Too many of them still do not understand that the policies of a party that is supposed to stand for workers must actually do so when in power.

As someone who has held hundreds of town meetings throughout the country, I have learned about another ugly and destructive aspect of our current health care system. Many workers stay at the job they have not because they like them, not because they are happy in their work, but because they have to stay in order to maintain decent health care coverage for their families. This reality has a significant impact upon our economy. How many great entrepreneurs, innovative businesspeople, and artists are unable to go out on their own because they will lose the health insurance they need? How many people become embittered, frustrated, and hateful because they are trapped in jobs they want to leave? Americans should not be chained to a job because of health insurance.

Unlike every other major country on earth, all of which have universal health care coverage, most Americans continue to get their health care through their jobs. Within employer-based health care, the nature of your coverage depends upon the status of your job, the generosity of your employer, and whether you are represented by a union. There are literally hundreds of different plans- each with different degrees of coverage and cost. If you change your job, which millions of workers do every year, it is likely that your insurance coverage will change. That could mean a different network and different doctors, hospitals, and out-of-pocket costs. Worse yet, you could end up with no insurance at all. The absurdity of basing health care coverage on one's job became very clear to all during the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic meltdown of 2020. As millions of workers lost their jobs, they also lost their health care coverage. No job, no health care- in the middle of a pandemic, when you need health care the most. That make sense to someone. Not to me.