The Gospel According To Bernie: 50 Hell-Raising Quotes From Bernie Sanders

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1.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.


2.

Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.


3.

I don’t represent large corporations and I don’t want their money.


4.

The U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often.


5.

We have a government of, by, and for billionaires.


6.

If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.


7.

A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.


8.

I have spent the better part of my adult life standing up and fighting for working families.


9.

I fear very much for our kids, for low-income people, and for seniors.


10.

One in four corporations doesn’t pay any taxes.


11.

Washington is dominated by big money.


12.

If you look at the newspapers here—the Washington papers—most of the discussion deals with campaign gossip.


13.

CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about.


14.

It’s better to show up than to give up.


15.

We are not going back. We are not returning to the days of back-room abortions, when countless women died or were maimed. The decision about abortion must remain a decision for the woman, her family and a physician to make, not the government.


16.

I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. In truth that’s not the case. The real truth is that Wall Street regulates the Congress.


17.

You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.


18.

We need to make sure that certain types of guns used to kill people, exclusively, not for hunting, should not be sold in the United States of America.


19.

A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little…We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America.


20.

Are we happy that 99% of all new income is going to the top 1%? Are we happy that one family in this country owns more than the bottom 130 million people?


21.

Folks who do not like guns is fine, but we have millions of people who are gun owners in this country; 99.9 percent of those people obey the law.


22.

I’m very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we’re seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We’re losing our privacy rights. It’s a huge issue.


23.

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don’t break the kneecaps of those who can’t pay back, they still are destroying people’s lives.


24.

Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education.


25.

There is a lot of sentiment that enough is enough, that we need fundamental changes, that the establishment — whether it is the economic establishment, the political establishment or the media establishment — is failing the American people.


26.

You have given the wealthiest portion of the population a tax break, and now you are coming before the American people and saying we don’t have enough money to protect the sick and the old.


27.

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.


28.

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.


29.

Finally, let understand that when we stand together, we will always win. When men and women stand together for justice, we win. When black, white and Hispanic people stand together for justice, we win.


30.

We got a collapsing middle. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we’ve had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people.


31.

You’ve got the top 400 Americans owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Most folks do not think that is right.


32.

I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The billionaires of America are on the warpath. They want more and more and more.


33.

Who do you think controls the Republican Party? Big money controls the Republican Party. This is where their campaign contributions come from.


34.

Low-income people, racial or ethnic minorities, pregnant women, seniors, people with special needs, people in rural areas – they all have a much harder time accessing a dentist than other groups of Americans.


35.

I think the overwhelming majority of the American people know that we have got to stand together, that we’re going to grow together, that we’re going to survive together, and that if we start splintering, we’re not going to succeed in a highly competitive international economy.


36.

To be honest with you, I worry about concentration of ownership in media, where you have a handful of media conglomerates largely controlling what we see, hear and read.


37.

You have to bring people together who may not agree on every issue but who understand that the middle class is collapsing and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where the billionaires will control the economy and the political life of this country.


38.

It is incomprehensible that drug companies still get away with charging Americans twice as much, or more, than citizens of Canada or Europe for the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same companies.


39.

If you ask me about my views on the environment, on women’s rights, on gay rights, I am liberal. I don’t have a problem with that at all. Some of my best friends are liberal.


40.

You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care and decent paying jobs.


41.

Balancing the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor is not only immoral, it is bad economic policy. It is something that must be vigorously opposed.


42.

The billionaire class now owns the economy and they are working day and night to make certain that they own the United States government.


43.

I don’t believe there’s a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans’ benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes.


44.

I think too many of my Republican friends are into perpetual warfare in the Middle East. And that scares the bejesus out of me.


45.

The question that the American people have to ask is why it is that corporate America — with the active support of the president of the United States and the congressional leadership — is selling out the American people and making China the economic superpower of the 21st century.


46.

You have given the wealthiest [portion] of the population a break, and now you are coming before the American people and saying, ‘We don’t have enough money to protect the sick and the old,


47.

No. It is not acceptable that the 6 largest financial institutions in this country have assets of almost 10 trillion dollars, and issue half of the mortgages and two-thirds of the credit cards. That is too much wealth and power in the hands of a few. If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today he’d tell us to ‘break them up.’ And he’d be right. These huge banks must be broken up.


48.

It’s time to make our government work for all of us…and not just the 1%.


49.

We must fundamentally restructure our student loan program. It makes no sense that students and their parents are forced to pay interest rates for higher education loans that are much higher than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.


50.

What the American people want to see in their president is somebody who not necessarily can win every fight, but they want to see him stand up and fight for what he believes, take his case to the American people.