Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“I see people like me, who thought someone like me couldn't be in politics, now are saying, 'Oh, wait, I don't need to take money from corporations to run. Maybe I'll run, too.'”

“When we talk about the word 'socialism,' I think what it really means is just democratic participation in our economic dignity and our economic, social, and racial dignity. It is about direct representation and people actually having power and stake over their economic and social wellness, at the end of the day.”

“I was nominated at first by a group called Justice Democrats. They were trying to essentially field non-corporate candidates in the 2018 midterm election. They were looking for people with a history of community service, and my name had come across their desk, and they called.”

“The biggest hurdle that our communities have is cynicism - saying it's a done deal, who cares; there's no point to voting. If we can get somebody to care, it's a huge victory for the movement and the causes we're trying to advance.”

“There is no such thing as talking about class without there being implications of the racial history of the United States. You just can't do it.”

“I think there's a weapon of cynicism to say, 'Protest doesn't work. Organizing doesn't work. Y'all are a bunch of hippies. You know, it doesn't do anything,' because, frankly, it's said out of fear, because it is a potent force for political change.”

“To me, what socialism means is to guarantee a basic level of dignity. It's asserting the value of saying that the America we want and the America that we are proud of is one in which all children can access a dignified education. It's one in which no person is too poor to have the medicines they need to live.”

“I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.”

“I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom. I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.”

“When people feel like they are being spoken directly to, I do feel like... they'll do things like turn out in an off-year, mid-year primary.”

“Public schools in the late '80s and early '90s were a total mess... we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.”

“I think - I do think that we have to have a secure border. We need to make sure that people are, in fact, documented. But that doesn't mean that we threaten people's lives.”

“There's this false notion that you have to separate and choose between issues of class and issues of race. What people do when they say that you need to separate class from race is that they are really just saying that people of color should come second.”

“Democrats are a big-tent party. You know, I'm not trying to impose an ideology on all, you know, several hundred members of Congress.”

“People try to identify who is the most likely person to turn out, and what we did is that we changed who turns out. And that changes the whole electorate.”