Lawrence O'Donnell

“I think a lot of people on both sides have extremely naive views of what government is capable of.”

“People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been very busy educating America about just how much socialism we have, from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public universities, and how much we love that. The truth is that there is no pure socialist or capitalist economy on earth.”

“Show business comes with wonderfully long vacations, like the life of a college professor.”

“In pre-election polling, momentum is more important than position, and in primary polling, national numbers are useless.”

“Everything I ever suggested for 'The West Wing' comes from my work with Senator Moynihan.”

“Around the courthouse when defense lawyers are chatting about their cases, the only question they ask each other is can you put your guy on the stand? Those conversations always assume the defendant is guilty. The question is just about the degree of difficulty in presenting a defense.”

“The thing about live TV is that it simply has to be done, there's no space for procrastination.”

“You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospitals and medical research, and you can do that at the same time and still retain an ability to function.”

“Bill O'Reilly is a socialist. He is in favor of Medicare, he is in favor of Social Security. Those are socialist programs.”

“The worst teacher in America could never do as much damage as the worst police officer in America. But the right wing has never even been slightly curious about evaluating the job performance of police officers.”

“You don't immediately adopt the values and the framework of this, the academically successful world, just because okay now you kids get to go to high school.”

“It's hard to get me outraged.”

“I ended up going to Harvard College, which was about as likely in my neighborhood as going to the moon.”

“Politics has become show biz.”

“Desegregation came very painfully to the Boston schools, long after John Kelly finished high school, and the pain of desegregating Boston schools was visited entirely on the students who looked like Frederica Wilson.”

“One of the things that I see on Twitter is that people think they know what you think about things you haven't discussed.”

“I don't for one second spend any time thinking about carefully ingratiating myself with someone for the future.”

“Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it.”

“Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.”

“Successful presidential campaigns follow a two-part strategy. For Republicans, Richard Nixon described it as running to the right in the primaries and running back to the center in the general election. For Democrats, the idea is to go to the left in the primaries, then to the center.”