Martin O'Malley Quotes

We live in a very different world than the one that we inherited from our parents and from our grandparents. Times are changing, and states must adapt to win.

Donald Trump is an unstable charlatan who is appealing to the worst instincts in people, and I believe ultimately the American people are going to reject that.

I believe marriage is a human right, not a state right.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

I am not surprised that this is a longer bit of work than many of us would have hoped. It is not where any of us would have hoped it is. And I think we need to give credit to the Republicans in Congress who have done everything they can to defeat every jobs bill and slow down the economy.

A community united by the ideals of compassion and creativity has incredible power. Art of all kinds
music, literature, traditional arts, visual arts
can lift a community.

Some people see Baltimore as a hopeless place. Some have even made a lot of money on it.

Maryland is home to one of the world's most highly skilled, highly educated workforces.

There is no legislative change that can be made to make up for an economy that's not growing and not expanding.

Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.

Leadership is about making the right decision and the best decision before, sometimes, it becomes entirely popular.

I believe in the dignity of every person. I believe that while we are all free to practice our religion, and to hold whatever religious beliefs we choose.

I can tell you my feelings were hurt,

Senator Mikulski has done an outstanding job representing Maryland in the U.S. Senate for nearly 30 years.

You can't strengthen the ranks of your middle class, you can't strengthen and grow the ranks of your businesses and family-owned businesses, unless you are fiscally responsible.

My all-time favourite political promise - more a boast than a promise, really - came from former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.'

The Offshore Wind Energy Act could be not only a jobs creator, but also a history maker.

Democrats haven't been functioning effectively as a party at the national level.

There is no greater ladder into the middle class than education.

Donald Trump is a racist. Donald Trump in fact is making fascist appeals. That's why many self-respecting Republicans are not supporting Donald Trump for president.

Maryland is among the nation's most vulnerable states to the effects of sea level rise from climate change, and we are taking strong action to reduce carbon pollution.

The right to vote gives every eligible American a voice in our electoral politics. There's too much at stake to stay silent as this right is eroded.

There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.

Leaders exhibit two essential characteristics, the willingness to confront adversity and a clearly articulated future preference.

We make our own future; we govern ourselves, and to govern is to choose.

Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.

I think former President Clinton and even Newt Gingrich have said it was a mistake to repeal Glass Steagall.

Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives.

Doing difficult things like passing marriage equality, passing the Dream Act, doing common sense things that allow new American immigrants to fully participate, pay their taxes, play by the rules and take care of their families. That's the inclusive America that I believe all of us want to move to.

The world is a very dangerous place, but the world is not too dangerous of a place for the United States of America, provided we act according to our principles, provided we act intelligently.

When people live in the full light of an open society, paying their taxes, abiding by the rules, that makes not only our country safer and more secure because people are not relegated to living in the shadows and not creating underground economies, it also is better for wages because the fact that people are working on the books in the open means that there's greater demand for labor and you don't have this submarket.

If you give voters a choice between a Democrat who promises to do nothing and a Republican who promises to do nothing, they're generally going to side with the Republican, because they're better at that than we are.

The Republicans have kind of painted themselves into a kind of a real demographic corner, if you will.

Between 1999 and 2009, the people of Baltimore achieved the greatest reduction in crime of America's largest cities.

The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members.

If a bank's too big so that it can't fail without hurting our economy, well then, it's too big.

The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all.

Progress is a choice.

As mayor, I got used to the fact that when you walked out of the house in the morning to pick up the newspaper in your boxers, there could be a camera there.

No woman who works full time and plays by the rules should have to raise her family in poverty.

Oh, you know what, it's an honor to be mentioned in the company of those that might lead our country forward after President Obama.

The answers to feeding hungry children is not fewer dollars to feed hungry children, it's to do more. It is to raise the minimum wage. It is to increase, not dismantle, the earned income tax credit. It is to make college more affordable for more middle class families, not more expensive. These are the things that grow our middle class.

I go to the gym pretty regularly.

Extreme poverty is extremely dangerous.

I believe that we do our country a disservice when we make it harder for new American immigrants to abide by the rules of the road and obtain drivers licenses.

Together with President Obama, we are moving America forward, not back.

The most valuable investment we can make is in our children's education. When we make education a priority, we give our children opportunity. Opportunity to learn at higher levels than their parents were able to learn; to earn at higher levels than we were able to earn.

Look, being president of the United States is the toughest job in the world and I can tell you, as someone who has worked with Secretary Clinton and competed against her that she is a tough person who is ready to do this job.

Our politics has been greatly impacted, for the worse, by big money and the concentration of big money.

ISIS has brought down a Russian airliner. ISIS has now attacked a western democracy in - in France. And we do have a role in this. Not solely ours, but we must work collaboratively with other nations.

All of us, wherever we happen to stand on the marriage equality issue, can agree that all our children deserve the opportunity to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home, protected equally under the law.

We took out the safe haven in Afghanistan, but now there is, undoubtedly, a larger safe haven and we must rise to this occasion in collaboration and with alliances to confront it, and invest in the future much better human intelligence so we know what the next steps are.

The most fearless hearts, the audacious dreamers, have always maintained a sense of optimism that often flies in the face of the available evidence.

I've been an executive and a progressive executive with a record of accomplishments.

None of us wants to pay more at the pump.

People's trust in their public institutions depends on their government getting results.

When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.

We haven't had an agenda for American cities probably since at least Jimmy Carter. We have left cities to fend for themselves.

Putting middle class families in jeopardy in order to protect the wealthiest among us isn't consistent with the values and priorities that most Americans share.

I believe that there are new perspectives that are needed in order for us to resolve the problems that we face as Americans and also the problems we face as people on this planet, and I believe that new perspective and new leadership is needed.

Civil rights was not an impossible dream. Thousands of brave African Americans stepped forward to make it happen.

Roads do not upgrade or maintain themselves. Bridges do not repair themselves or rebuild themselves.

The march of progress must continue.

Making government more efficient and more effective need not be a partisan issue.

Every child should be given a strong start to their education.

We must preserve our planet and grow our economy simultaneously. We cannot become more prosperous without the living systems upon which our prosperity depends.

Marylanders have led the nation in adopting a balanced approach to revenues and investments because we know that in order to maintain and build the #1 public schools in the nation, we had to ask everyone to pay their fair share. We need Congress to do the same.

The Clintons are very close with everybody on the Democratic side.

Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most.

Climate change is transforming the world in profound ways that continue to evolve.

While different states and cities might look to different strategies for protecting public safety, we all can agree on this: we lose too many American lives to gun violence.

There are times in Annapolis when a governor's support can move an issue over the goal line.

If workers have less money in their pockets to put food on the table, they will be spending less money; your economy will suffer.

We need to be much more far thinking in this new 21st century era of - of nation state failures and conflict. It's not just about getting rid of a single dictator. It is about understanding the secondary and third consequences that fall next.

The Republican Party is doubling down on this trickle-down theory that says, 'Thou shalt concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. Thou shalt remove regulation from wherever you find it, even on Wall Street. And thou shalt keep wages low for American workers so that we can be more competitive.'

We can't expect Wall Street to police itself - that's why we have a federal government.

I think we can all agree that every child's home deserves to be protected equally under the law, that there is dignity in every child's home.

I did not dedicate my life to making Baltimore a safer and more just place because it was easy.

When I was in Grade 9, there was an election for high school president, and one of the candidates told us that if we elected him, he would abolish homework. He promised this to the entire student body from the stage in the school gymnasium.

If any mayor reduced school funding by 33 percent and called it the 'Strengthening Our Schools Initiative,' I think they'd be excoriated.

I think we need an American jobs agenda for the climate challenge which means American renewable grid, more renewable energy.

As Americans, we have shown ourselves to have the greatest military on the face of the planet, but we are not so very good at anticipating threats and appreciating just how difficult it is to build up stable democracies, to make the investments and sustainable development that we must as a nation if we are to attack the root causes of these sorts of instability.

We need to focus on destroying ISIL, but we shouldn't be the ones declaring that [Bashir] Assad must go.

I was motivated to go into public life because of the great chasm that exists between justice and injustice in our country. Nowhere is that divide greater than in America's cities.

Protecting our land, our air and our water is a very important thing that we can only do together.

So, look, in order to move our country forward, we have to do the things our parents and grandparents did. They believed enough in our country to invest in our country, to create jobs, to make modern investments. And those are the things that we need to get back to with a balanced approach.

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we give our children a future of more or a future of less - this, too, is a choice.

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

I think that the S.E.C. has been pretty feckless when it comes to reigning in reckless behavior on Wall Street.

In Maryland, we consider ourselves pro-growth Americans.

Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results.

Secretary Clinton is perfectly capable of defending her own service in office.

I'm not opposed to free trade if it's fair trade. But I am opposed to bad trade deals.

Our parents taught us to love God, love our family and love our country. Their own grandparents were immigrants. Their first language may not have been English, but the hopes and dreams they had for their children were purely American.

But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.

The attitude in Baltimore in 1999 was almost one of resignation, that our problems were bigger than our capacity to handle them.

A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.

Public trust is essential to public safety.

Let's not fall into the trap of thinking that all of our Muslim American neighbors in this country are somehow our enemies here. They are our first line of defense.

I believe that the best way to campaign is one-on-one with people.