Bernie Sanders People Quotations

If there is a silver lining in the action of MSNBC against Keith Olbermann, it is that people will now pay more attention to the political role of corporate media in America.

Capitalism does a number of things very well: it helps create an entrepreneurial spirit; it gets people motivated to come up with new ideas, and that's a good thing.

In 49 countries around the world, including all of Europe, people have the opportunity of knowing whether or not they are eating food which contains genetically engineered ingredients. In the United States, we don't.

The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States, and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

The Senate voted 59 to 39 in favor of an amendment I offered to the Budget Resolution calling on the Fed to tell the American people who they loaned $2.2 trillion to and how much each bank received.

Nowadays you don't need to be a senator or a CEO or a celebrity to have a voice in the media, and if you happen to be a senator, a CEO or a celebrity, you have a thousand people each with their own respective audiences to hold you accountable.

The votes elected officials make should be based on the best interests of the American people, not the fear of retribution when shadowy groups spend millions of dollars on negative advertisements.

We need the best educated workforce in the world. Hundreds of thousands of bright, young, qualified people who want to go to college or get a higher education are unable to do so, not because they lack the ability but because they lack the money.

In my view, one of the major reasons that we have so many people in jail is that we have turned our backs on a lot young people.

When people get out of jail, it is not easy for them to find a job. It is not easy for them to return to civil society.

Most people that I know don believe that a handful of corporations request sit together without disclosure, by the way, and pump hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process. That is not the democracy that many of us believe America should be.

I think it makes people in the Pentagon kind of nervous to know that chemical agents and environmental factors could cause so much damage in terms of what may happen in the future.

I think the American people in many cases want to transform our energy system.

Hillary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.

Let's talk about why, in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street provided - spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions?Well, some people might think, yeah, that had some influence.

I come from a rural state. People drive 50, 100 miles to and from work every single day. That is true all over America.

You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care and decent paying jobs.

The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.

I think the overwhelming majority of the American people know that we have got to stand together, that we're going to grow together, that we're going to survive together, and that if we start splintering, we're not going to succeed in a highly competitive international economy.

What this [presidency] campaign is about this bringing millions of people jobs in this country.

It's time for the Supreme Court to catch up to the American people and legalize gay marriage.

Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question.

We are living at a time where a handful of people have wealth beyond comprehension - huge yachts, jet planes, tens of billions of dollars, more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. But at the same time, millions of people are struggling to feed their families or put a roof over their heads or find the money to go to a doctor.

In any democratic, civilized - even non-democratic nations, if you are a nation, it means to say that in our case, if there's a hurricane in Louisiana, the people of Vermont are there for them. If there's a tornado in the Midwest, we are there for them. If there's flooding in the East Coast, the people in California are there for us.

When I was a young boy, I can remember in the community that I grew up in, seeing people in the community who had numbers that were on their arms.

The American people understand that it is grotesquely unfair - we are a society that prides itself on fairness, that prides itself on equal opportunity, and people are looking out and seeing, since the Great Recession of 2008, 99 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent.

Low-income people, racial or ethnic minorities, pregnant women, seniors, people with special needs, people in rural areas - they all have a much harder time accessing a dentist than other groups of Americans.

Obviously one would hope one would have as much support as possible from all walks of life, i am a great fan of Elizabeth and as for what people do and why they don't do it, I am not going to speculate.

I have a long history in fighting for civil rights. I understand that many people in the African-American community may not understand that.

There are a lot of smart honest, progressive people who I think can be good presidents.

We still have people in the active duty, and if people are feeling ill, if they're experiencing various symptoms and they're still in the active duty, they're less likely to come forward because that could result in their medical discharge.

I surely remember being in the administration building sitting in long sleepless nights and working with young people to do the right thing. And that is to tell our university, at that time, the University of Chicago, that it was wrong to own and maintain segregated housing. I remember it very well.

I've run for statewide office plenty of times, and people know me.

All over this country you have progressive communities like Madison and Burlington, but we've got to go well, well, well outside of those communities. We've got to go to the rural areas. We've got to go where a lot of working people are voting Republican.

I don't want to see kids in America being scared because they're hearing people on television and the radio saying really ugly xenophobic and racist things.

It's immoral and wrong that the top 1 percent of the USA owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. We should look at countries like Denmark and Sweden and Norway and look at what they've accomplished for their working people.

I want to see working people and young people come into the party in a way that doesn't exist now. And you know what, I want a 50-state strategy so the Democratic Party is not just the party of 25 states.

I think it's important that members of the United States Senate spend time not just on Capitol Hill but making contact with ordinary people and engaging them in the political process.

The Affordable Care Act has clearly, as Secretary Clinton made the point, done a lot of good things, but, what it has not done is dealt with the fact we have 29 million people today who have zero health insurance, we have even more who are underinsured with large deductibles and copayments and prescription drug prices are off the wall.

People don't trust private health insurance companies for all the right reasons.

Most Republicans are not prepared to stand up to the fossil fuel industry because they get a lot of their campaign funds from the Koch brothers and other people in the fossil fuel industry. That tells me why we have to reform our campaign finance system.

The only way change happens is when people become more significantly involved in the political process.

People understand that the economy is rigged. They're working longer hours for low wages. All new income and wealth, almost all, is going to the people on top.

People all over this country are shouting at each other. And what we need to do is bring people together to work on the agreement where there is broad consensus and that's what I intend to do.

So as a nation, we have a right to be very proud of the successes that we have seen because of the struggle of millions of people to create a less discriminatory society. That is something we should be proud of, but there is one struggle in which not only have we not succeeded but in which we are losing ground and that is the fundamental struggle for economic justice.

Any idiot, especially one who is prepared to die, who has a gun, can start shooting up people.

I fear very much for our kids, for low income people and for seniors.

Do I consider myself a part of the casino capitalist process? No I don't. I believe in a society where all people do well.

I would like to see somebody who speaks for the underdog, for the people who don`t have this in healthcare benefits. So I would like to see a candidate who has the guts to opposition that America could be a land for all people, not just the land control by the super rich.

Republicans win when people are demoralized and you have a small voter turnout, which by the way is why they love voter suppression. I believe that our campaign up to now has shown that we can create an enormous amount of enthusiasm from working people, from young people, who will get involved in the political process and which will drive us to a very large voter turnout.

The American people in my view will never support a candidate whose major theme is bigotry.

The American people, whether you are Democrat, independent, Republican, progressive, conservative, do not believe corporations are people or that corporations should be able to buy elections.

I come from a state that has virtually no gun control. And yet, at political peril, I voted for an instant background check, which I want to see strengthened and expanded. I voted to ban certain types of assault weapons which are designed only to kill people.

Every major country on earth, whether it's the U.K., whether it's France, whether it's Canada, has managed to provide healthcare to all people as a right and they are spending significantly less per capita on health care than we are. So I do not accept the belief that the United States of America can't do that.

I'm running for president, because as I go around this nation, I talk to a lot of people. And what I hear is people's concern that the economy we have is a rigged economy.

Ever since [Donald]Trump has been opening his big mouth, you`re seeing all these bitter people, latent racists who are becoming emboldened. You`re seeing some ugly stuff happening around this country.

When Hillary Clinton ran against Senator [Barack] Obama she thought him naive because he thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies. I think those are exactly the people you have to talk to and you have to negotiate with.

It's not something where you can say, one time you said this and now you said this. That doesn't peel off any of his people. The only way that you can do it is by out alphaing [Doanld] Trump, and I think that's what Marco Rubio's attempting to do.

I think what the secretary Hillary Clinton has recognized is the American people are extremely angry about the power of Wall Street, the greed, the illegal behavior of Wall Street.

Secretary [Hillary ] Clinton is absolutely right, there are people, Koch brothers among others, who have a group called Concerned Veterans of America, funded by the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers, by the way, want to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, every governmental program passed since the 1930s. Yes, there are people out there who want to privatize it.

We have more people in jail than any other country in Earth, disproportionately Latino and African-American.

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.

The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your [Hillary Clinton] damn e-mails!

If you look at our records, I stood up to corporate America time and time again. I went to Mexico. I saw the lives of people who were working in American factories and making $0.25 an hour.

The Postal Service is a vitally important institution for the American people. It must be saved.

We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana.

I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege.

Between 2013 and 2015, the wealthiest 14 people saw their wealth increase by $157 billion. This is their wealth increase, got it? Not what they are worth. Increase. That $157 billion is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 40 percent of the American people. One family, the Walton family, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent.

We`ve got to stand with those people who are being attacked today, but at the same time, it`s not good enough to say that racism and xenophobia is bad. We`ve got to reach those people today who are so angry, who are so hateful and say, yes, you have a right to be angry, don`t take it out on the Muslims. Work with us to create an agenda and political movement that will make your life better, not just other people`s life worse.

The good news is that the American people, not just the African-American community are saying enough is enough. You can`t hold people in custody and suddenly find out that they are dead. You can`t shoot people in the back.

And the reason that I was one of the first, not one of the last to be in opposition to the TPP is that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Vietnam today making a minimum wage of $0.65 an hour. Look, what we have got to do is tell corporate America that they cannot continue to shut down. We've lost 60,000 factories since 2001. They're going to start having to, if I'm president, invest in this country - not in China, not in Mexico.

It is beyond my comprehension why today in America, hundreds of thousands of bright young people are unable to go to college - for one reason: that their family lacks the funding. And together we are going to change that.

...Poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people.

It is time to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol. It is time to end the arrests of so many people and the destruction of so many lives for possessing marijuana.

I think our trade policies, for many, many years, have been a disaster. They have benefited corporate America at the expense of working people.

I think the immediate thing is we stand up to protect those people who are in trouble.

What are the moral implications? What do these people do when they have tremendous amounts of money? They use that money to perpetuate their own wealth and their own power. Every day, Congress works on behalf of big-money interests.

What I think people should realize is that programs like Social Security, programs like Medicare, programs like the Veterans Administration, programs like your local park and your local library - those are, if you like, socialist programs; they're run by [and] for the public, not to make money. I think in many ways we should expand that concept so that the American people can enjoy the same benefits that people all over the world are currently enjoying.

What the people here have said is that given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics.

A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932 ... and 50 million people died as a result ... what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.

I'm not really opposed to people changing their minds. I'm much more concerned with people who never change their minds no matter what new information is available.

The government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of the wealthy.

NAFTA, supported by the Secretary cost, us 800,000 jobs nationwide, tens of thousands of jobs in the Midwest. Permanent normal trade relations with China cost us millions of jobs. Look, I was on a picket line in early 1990's against NFATA because you didn't need a PhD in economics to understand that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Mexico making 25 cents an hour.

When millions of people stand up and fight...they win.

The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people.

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

Representative Spencer Bachus is one of the only people I know from Alabama. I bet I'm the only socialist he knows.

I happen to respect people who are willing to come under public scrutiny and serve their country.

We did phenomenally well with young people. I think we did well with working class people.

Interestingly, a lot of the polling that I see is not along racial lines, but along generational lines. We are doing better and better among younger people, not so well among older people, whether they're African-American, whether they're white or whether they're Latino.

We will do well when young people, when working-class people come out. We do not do well when the voter turnout is not large. We did not do as good a job as I had wanted to bring out a large turnout.

I am the longest- serving independent in the history of the United States Congress. People of Vermont sent me to Washington as an independent. That is true.

I think the way for [Marco] Rubio to say to [Donald] Trump supporters, hey, essentially he's conned you. He's a con man. That's what they do. You pour gold people.My goodness, that's not the way to bring them in.

This kind of support tells me that people want a strong voice in the United States Senate who will help lead the fight against the most reactionary administration in modern American history,

The cost of college education today is so high that many young people are giving up their dream of going to college, while many others are graduating deeply in debt.

People who know the economy is rigged in favor of big money, people who know that our middle class continues to decline and we have to go outside of establishment politics and economics, people who know that we need to reform a broken criminal justice system and we need comprehensive immigration reform.

I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This country, this great country, belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all.

I know media is not necessarily focused on these things. But what a campaign is about is not Hillary Clinton, it's not Donald Trump. It is the people of this country, people who are working longer hours for lower wages, people who do not have health care or are underinsured.