Bernie Sanders Quotations

If the environment were a bank, it would have been saved by now

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.

They talk about class warfare -- the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country. And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?

I am going to do my best to try to create a country in which children are not living in poverty, in which kids can go to college, in which old people have health care. Will I succeed? I can't guarantee you that, but I can tell you that from a human point of view it is better to show up than to give up.

At a time when the Post Office is losing substantial revenue from the instantaneous flow of information by email and on the Internet, slowing mail service is a recipe for disaster.

Difficult times often bring out the best in people.

You know, let me be very clear. I supported Barack Obama originally.

One in four corporations doesn't pay any taxes.

While commentators on Fox and right-wing radio have the backing of Rupert Murdoch, a major Republican contributor, and other conservative corporations, progressives understand that their position is extremely vulnerable.

Coal and oil lobbyists added fossil fuels to a bill aimed at helping American manufacturers, so they too could claim 'manufacturing' tax deductions.

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.

Look, if you have somebody who doesn't have health insurance, who doesn't have a doctor or dentist, and in order to deal with their cold or flu or dental problem, they go to an emergency room - in general, that visit will cost ten times more than walking into a community health center.

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.

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

Every working family in America knows how hard it is today to find affordable childcare or early childhood education.

I'm not a Democrat, I'm an Independent, but I caucus with the Democrats.

If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

If you ask me about my views on the environment, on women's rights, on gay rights, I am liberal. I don't have a problem with that at all. Some of my best friends are liberal.

What the American people want to see in their president is somebody who not necessarily can win every fight, but they want to see him stand up and fight for what he believes, take his case to the American people.

After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.

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.

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.

It is incomprehensible that drug companies still get away with charging Americans twice as much, or more, than citizens of Canada or Europe for the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same companies.

For many, the American Dream has become a nightmare.

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.

In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.

We all remember the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. What is less well known is that BP is claiming a 9.9 billion tax deduction on the money they had to spend cleaning up their own mess and paying for damages they caused. That is absurd.

As a single-payer advocate, I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost-effective way.

For better or worse, when Sen. Inhofe speaks, the Republican Party follows. And when the Republican Party follows, it is impossible to get real work done in the Congress.

Wall Street is greedy, reckless and they operate illegally. That's fine. But what do you do?

At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy.

A president and a party that can provide insurance for 31 million more Americans is far preferable to most voters than a party that only says, 'No.'

Every day we are paying more for energy than we should due to poor insulation, inefficient lights, appliances, and heating and cooling equipment - money we could save by investing in energy efficiency.

Two-thirds of the directors at the New York Fed are hand-picked by the same bankers that the Fed is in charge of regulating.

These are the same people who believe, in some cases, the federal government should not play any role in providing health care to our people or protecting the environment.

We should make a major financial commitment to improving our roads and bridges.

If credit unions can grow and prosper with a 15 percent cap, so can banks.

Here is what the practical impact of Citizens United means. What Citizens United means is that corporations call hundreds of millions of dollars into television ads, radio ads, and other forms of advertising to defeat those candidates who stand up and take them on.

I see a future where getting to work or to school or to the store does not have to cause pollution.

You know, I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. In truth that's not the case. The real truth is that Wall Street regulates the Congress.

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.

The goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way.

You've got the top 400 Americans owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Most folks do not think that is right.

There is nobody that I know who believes that Bank of America is a human being who should be entitled for the same constitutional rights that the people of our country are.

CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

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.

Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.

Who do you think controls the Republican Party? Big money controls the Republican Party. This is where their campaign contributions come from.

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

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

If you look at the newspapers here - the Washington papers - most of the discussion deals with campaign gossip.

You want to know the way to raise money? Put a transaction fee on Wall Street, so maybe we can curb some of the speculation and raise some money.

I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes.

The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.

To be honest with you, I worry about concentration of ownership in media, where you have a handful of media conglomerates largely controlling what we see, hear and read.

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.

Most of us have not heard about Master Limited Partnerships. These special financing arrangements allow oil and gas investors to avoid paying certain corporate income taxes, but are not available to clean energy businesses.

History will record that the Citizens United decision is one of the worst in the history of our country.

Let's be honest, dental care in America is extremely expensive, period.

There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages.

We need an energy revolution by breaking our dependence on fossil fuels, polluting fuels... I am very, very confident our small state will lead this. We will be noticed by the country and the world.

Danes pay very high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would find hard to believe.

The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.

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.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.

I see a future where states compete with one another to see which can be the most efficient, and where businesses seek out efficient states in which to locate so they can reap the economic and environmental benefits for their businesses and employees.

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

If the goal of health-care reform is to provide comprehensive, universal health care in a cost-effective way, the only honest approach is a single-payer approach.

As a result of the digital age and the decline of first-class mail, there is no question that the Postal Service must change and develop a new business model.

When we talk about the healthcare crisis in America we've got to also be talking about the dental crisis and how to address it.

Ted Kennedy devoted his lifetime to protecting those most in need, and tens of millions of Americans have been the beneficiaries.

I am sure that there are some single payer advocates who think the only thing worth fighting for is single payer.

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.

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

What some of us believe is that it is possible that if chemicals are related to Gulf War illness that some of the more severe symptoms may not erupt until 10 or 20 years down the line.

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.

The bottom line is that when Senator Inhofe says, 'Global warming is a hoax,' he is just dead wrong, according to the vast majority of climate scientists.

Before Social Security existed, about half of America's senior citizens lived in poverty.

Citizens in a democracy need diverse sources of news and information.

If we are going to reverse the race to the bottom, workers must have the right to engage in collective bargaining.

I am not aware how you succeed politically when you insult women, who far more than men consistently provide you with great margins of support.

States used to protect consumers from predatory lenders, but strong state usury laws were obliterated by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The Federal Reserve has the responsibility to protect the credit rights of consumers.

Former Senator Al D'Amato in 1991 offered an amendment to cap credit card interest rates at 14 percent.

Mitt Romney's energy policy is a relic of the 19th century. We need a 21st century plan. The fate of the planet is at stake.

Private insurance companies in America are reaping huge profits.

Progressive activists are angry that a Medicare-for-all single-payer approach was totally ignored during the health care debate.

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

Senate Republicans have engaged in a record number of filibusters and other obstructionist tactics.

The Department of Defense, the largest single energy consumer in America, is bullish on solar.

In terms of job creation, every billion dollars invested in the physical infrastructure creates 47,000 new jobs.

The right wing has monopolized the AM radio airwaves.

Vermonters often ask me whether I am pessimistic about the future of our country. My honest answer is that I am not.

What the Ten Million Solar Roofs Act does is provide consumer rebates for the purchase and installation of solar systems.

When World AIDS Day was first observed in 1988, there was no truly effective treatment for what was almost always a deadly disease.

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.

As a member of both the energy and environment committees, I am constantly astounded by how many of my colleagues prefer to focus on what the government can do for the nuclear or coal industries rather than why the government should support clean and sustainable energy.

Shouting down and intimidating someone from speaking their mind is not exactly a Vermont town meeting value, nor should it be an American town meeting value.

Before Congress cuts funding for Head Start, Social Security, and financial aid for college, we have got to make sure that large, profitable corporations are paying their fair share of taxes.