Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“Campaigns are so much more expensive than people think they are. Just to keep the lights on is several thousand dollars a month.”

“I want to speak to people directly as much as possible.”

“I understand the pain of working-class Americans because I have experienced the pain.”

“I believe that every American should have stable, dignified housing; health care; education - that the most very basic needs to sustain modern life should be guaranteed in a moral society.”

“It's disingenuous to... pretend the sources of our money don't impact the policy we write - you just can't serve two masters.”

“Healthcare as a human right, it means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade-school education if they so choose it, and I think no person should be homeless if we can have public structures and public policy to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States.”

“We have a political culture of intimidation, of favoring, of patronage, and of fear, and that is no way for a community to be governed.”

“Democrats should be getting high-fives from sanitation truck drivers - that is what should be happening in America.”

“Rather than think of it as somewhere to run from, the Bronx is somewhere to invest.”

“I don't like having people do little things for me.”

“Women like me aren't supposed to run for office.”

“Change takes courage.”

“In terms of closing Rikers, we have to close Rikers, but we have to ensure that we're not just taking - that we're not continuing to incarcerate the same level of people. It doesn't do us much good if we close Rikers and then take that same amount of people and just distribute them to be incarcerated elsewhere.”

“It's time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn't live here, doesn't send his kids to our schools, doesn't drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.”

“Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.”

“I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.”

“It is unacceptable to be disrespectful of Congressman Crowley. He's done some phenomenal, phenomenal work for the Bronx and Queens.”

“Before ICE, we had Immigration and Naturalization Services, but it wasn't until about 1999 that we chose to criminalize immigration at all. And then, once ICE was established, we really kind of militarized that enforcement to a degree that was previously unseen in the United States.”

“In Puerto Rico, we continue to see the perpetuation of second-class citizenship in the United States.”

“I was born to a dad who was born in the South Bronx while the Bronx was burning, while landlords were committing arson to their own buildings.”