Chris Matthews Quotes

It was his detachment that saved us. Another man would have reacted with force to the Soviet treachery. He would have shared the righteousness of the cause, been stirred to attack by the saber rattling. Jack resisted. He was not moved by the emotion of other around him. He knew his course and stayed to it. Thank God. The boy who had read alone of history's heroes was now safely on of them. He had done it not winning a war, but by averting one far more horrible than any leader in the past could have imagined." - p.373

And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.

They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.'

Pope John Paul II spoke with a lot of clarity and consistency. But he always spoke with immense compassion. He's the one who said the best way to love somebody is to tell them the truth. So, he did that well.

In politics there is a large difference between loosing and being defeated.

I used to love hand raising.

If you think what you see on TV is prejudiced, it is. Follow your instincts.

I think, internally, we Catholics have known this for a long time. I think we're just thrilled and grateful that the rest of the world now is sharing in the esteem and gratitude that we've had for Pope John Paul II for 26 and a half years.

Keep your enemies in front of you.

While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Toastmasters changed my life. They really did. Put me on the stage.
I don't know what I would have done without that positive boost.

We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.

Even if you're not a Catholic, even if you're not a Christian, in fact even if you have no religious faith at all, what people could see in Pope John Paul was a man of true and profound spiritual faith.

I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now.

To become a saint in the Catholic Church, the normal procedure is, beatification, requiring one miracle in your name, then canonization, roughly in five years or longer, to become a saint, a second miracle.

I forgot he [Barack Obama] was black tonight for an hour.

All Hollywood endings - the bad endings have to be the bad guys to be falling about 50 stories to his death and you have to see his eyeballs as he goes to his doom.

How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he's an Islamist until he's made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al-Qaida. Is that the point at which you say, "This guy is dangerous?" That's not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?

I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you.

O'Neill was perceptive enough to understand the country had a new leader that it wanted to believe in. After the tragedy of Dallas, after the quicksand of Vietnam, the scandal of Watergate, and the "malaise" of Jimmy Carter, it needed one.

The author, at the time a Carter speechwriter in the 1980 campaign, showed visible distress at his boss's performance and was warned by a friend in the traveling press, lest he become the story.

Rush Limbaugh is beginning to look more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet, but we'll be there to watch.

Every party and every movement tends to need a hero.

Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle.

I love what Joe Eszterhas written about Bill Clinton. It's hilarious, Clinton as a rock star, which is the way we should remember him.

Historically, the coupling of president and Speaker has been a tricky one that encourages a choreography both quick-footed and wary

The Catholic Church [with Pope John Paul II] has lost its shepherd. The world has lost a champion of human freedom.

I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.

The more failure you can accept, the greater your chance of success.

His [John Paul II] humanity, combined with his extraordinary spiritual authority, was unlike anything I've ever met.

He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

The whole reason we organize grassroots is, we think any politician that gets elected needs to be held accountable 365 days a year.

The big lie is that the people who make a lot of money were the only ones that worked hard.

Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.

The problem is there are people in this country - maybe 10%, I don't know what the number, maybe 20% on a bad day - who want this President to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn't President ... They can't stand the idea that he is President, and a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn't like somebody in another racial group. So what? It is the sense that the white race must rule. That's what racism is. And they can't stand the idea that a man who is not white is President.

Shared history was the coin of the realm.

All the 'too close to call' announcements are not due to incompetence ... It's caution.

It does look like it's almost like South Africa to this extent: You have a white - what's the word - feeble minority. It's losing its majority status. And it says, the Republican Party, 'We can only get so many white votes. So, we got to reduce the votes of others.' It does look that way. Only the - maybe you're non-partisan, but only Republicans have pushed this in these 31 states. No Democratic legislature. You gotta look at the pattern here. You talk about profiling. I'm sorry, Republicans do this stuff.

I know, when I look into the eyes of my own children, the look of wonder when I speak of life back in the '60s. That's why the Rolling Stones are such a hit even in their 60s, why Dennis Hopper is so compelling, even when he's making pitches for something unhip as long-term financial planning.

People - Hollywood doesn't talk about how bad cigarette smells when it smells like they wake up in bed with somebody who has been smoking the night before.

I'm so glad we had that storm last week.

The pope has been called many things, historic figure, spiritual leader, moral force. But a growing chorus of voices has begun to refer to him as John Paul II the Great, in other words, as a saint.

If you want to play a game, go to where it's played and find a way to get in. Things happen when you get in the game.

That is the voice of God because its the voice of truth and experience.

My audience is much more center right, or centrist.

You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.

What happens to conservatives when they get near the White House? How come they only seem to be talking the good talk at, say, the Senate level, when they don't have to run the show?

The author attributes part of the Carter-Reagan divide to their respective attitudes toward the city from which they governed. Carter was deeply suspicious of its coziness. Reagan intended to enjoy his temporary home even while delivering it from its reigning ideology.

The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.

While we may not mind being used, we resent deeply being made to feel discarded.

I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'

I never wrote off [Donald] Trump.

In life, as in death, Pope John Paul II was one of the most visible people on Earth.

I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

Keep you enemies in front of you.

I still think a reasonable question is, would we be better off with [Muamar] Gadhafi and Bashar al-Assad still in there and Mubarak still there and Saddam [Hussein] there than the crap we have got looking at us now?

You know, there were 29 Democratic votes for censure in the Senate. And if the Republicans had any sense, they would have censured him before the '98 midterm election, and they would have won the election.

My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.

on-air appearance you could see that the secretary of state

Someone needs to talk sense to the president. But these people are not world travelers. This president, much as I like him, had all the opportunities in the world.

He'd made a name for himself out there in the world beyond not just in spite of the distinctly unfashionable persona he presented, but, perhaps, BECAUSE of it.

Public opinion aside, it will be up to the future pope to continue John Paul II's journey to sainthood. Many of the late pope's followers believe he is already there.

Paying tax is not a punishment. It's a responsibility.

Are Democrats for expanding U.S. trade with the world and perhaps creating new jobs, or are they out to protect existing U.S. jobs?

We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.

It's no good to shoot a guy anymore. It's not enough.Nobody is throwing anybody off of buildings after seeing these movies, but they are smoking after seeing some good-looking celebrity smoke.

We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

Bill Clinton was for NAFTA. I heard him over in Tokyo he came out all said it was a great bill. Secretary Clinton was for it. She called it the gold standard when she was secretary of state.

I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'

B.B. King will be remembered for his impressive skills on the guitar, that King defined the blue genre.

Around the globe, millions more are mourning the death and celebrating the life of Pope John Paul II . Could any other world leader have drawn so many people to one place?

Pope John Paul II himself was kind of a rather independent, creative man. I remember being told by somebody who worked very close with him in preparation for his first visit to the United States in 1979, he studied our normative documents, Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution. And he was amazed. He called his priests first
thing in the morning and he said, he said, I thought America was a pagan country.

We in America count on the profit motive to get people to do the right thing. That's our basic American notion when it comes to business.

I am no longer going to go along with this idea that we're going to keep spending and borrowing and taking over and raising taxes, that I'm going to do everything I can to change things.

I look back to the Great Depression, and what Roosevelt was able to do in very difficult times, to get Social Security through back in the time when it was seen as - well, it wasn't what it is today. It was sort of a last-ditch, if you really need it, you got it, but, today, it's much more a part of your retirement program.

I think also people in states like Pennsylvania know that a lot of money and effort and time needs to be spent on knitting America back together, on the bridges and the roads and the infrastructure and the education.

The President [Barack Obama] said if we get out of this business of trade expansion, we turn it over to the Chinese. This brings us into partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim countries.

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, 'We are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something.' I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together.

I wonder ... if the Republican Party really wants to be branded right now as the party of tax cuts and torture? I mean that's what they're selling.

The Russian people were just like us. They were victims of their own government. Ronald Reagan

Even the bureaucracy does not shatter the stillness.

I think a lot it was the theology, that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad, that somehow if we broke apart the rejectionist states, like Iraq, then the whole Middle East would reconfigure itself into a more favorable environment for democracy and Israel and us.

In politics, nothing good ever comes from the unexpected.

And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war.

America's the one country in the world where anybody who comes here does better than where they came from.

For Reagan,for his contemporaries, and many in the generations after them, the word Munich was understood as code for any nation's stepping back from necessary toughness

I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

Pope John Paul II is the great. Only two other popes had that title. Does that suggest there is going to be a move for canonization?

When I hear Rand Paul, who is much younger, saying wars are verkakte, I agree with him.

Staffers tend to mimic their bosses, to take their key from them.

I care about Roger Sterling, one of the most subtle and amazing characters in dramatic history [Mad men]. This guys who knows precisely who he is, yet leaves us time after time hoping desperately for him to finally grab control of his life and some responsibility for those around him.

Tip, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I would give mine away and go to hell with you.

Ronald Reagan

The reason I had unfaithfulness in one of my marriages is because I was too patriotic.

Anecdotes came with his DNA.

How is this any different than the big boat argument of people when it came to African-Americans after the Civil War, decided, 'Put them on a boat and send them back where they came from?' You know, he says it in polite language, but that's what Romney's been saying, 'Get home where you came from, start all over again.'

Isn't it odd that the guy was politically correct in one particularly weird way. Bill Clinton never lit a cigar.

You can't be loved for long if you're not feared.

I had the good fortune of living in Rome for seven years, from 1994 to 2001. So, I kind of saw firsthand the impact that Pope John Paul II had on people.

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

The holy father John Paul II made a profound impact wherever he went. And, of course, his trip to Boston was one of the earliest ones. But I must say every time that I met the holy father and mentioned Boston, he would immediately say, rain. So, it made quite an impact on him, too.