Mark Shields Quotations

There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.

The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.

If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.

You've got people who didn't serve with John Kerry saying they did serve with John Kerry in the boat. With George Bush, we can't find anybody who did serve with him.

Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command, save one, has stood with him.

John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work; you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.

George Bush is trying to play it both ways.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.

When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

What you have is two men seeking the White House; they're both products of prominent New England families. They both went to private boarding schools. They both went to a prestigious university.

More and more young people are coming out because in the past 10 years especially we've seen a growth in positive gay role models, from Ellen DeGeneres to TV shows like 'Will and Grace' to openly gay public officials. Youth are seeing that you can be out and be a healthy, happy citizen.

We were 0-9 last year. For us, it's just trying to turn the program around.

There is definitely a certain proportion of this population for whom the only way to deal with humiliation - the only way to regain respect - is through violence. This is a place where many people don't look for ways to resolve a dispute. They take all matters to the very bitter end.

We knew we'd have a tough season (last year), but we knew the future would be promising.

Due to the vast quantity of material, it will take some time to review them all, but so far we have observed no celebrities, no politicians, no senior police officers, members of the clergy, or sporting figures on any of the images.

I'll be happy to take on John O'Neill.

He's an extremely tough kid, hits hard on defense and he can run a little bit. So right now I still have not established who my starting tailback is. It could take a few games.

They will be drawn from the existing homicide teams and from the divisions. We will be looking for first class investigators, who have a proven good investigative track record and, above all, professionalism and integrity.

The establishment of the task force is in fact an extension of the highly successful formula we have used in Operation Kingfish and elsewhere in the world.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

This is a great start for us, ... especially coming off a winless season like we had last year.

These initiatives are designed to improve the quality of life of the residents and give them the confidence to go about their lawful business without fear of being shot at or otherwise being intimidated by armed criminals.

It's going to be whoever runs the hardest each night.

I am more optimistic than most we can achieve change. True. I have not been here to see 30 years of deterioration - but I know there are proven police mechanisms, and that when put in place, things will get better.

He became almost a parody of himself, if you recall that black hat he wore in Arizona while brandishing the assault weapon.

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.

The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.

You have to understand that Republicans are on lockstep on one issue. They will not raise taxes. Democrats are in lockstep on another issue, pro-choice in all cases on abortion.

There is always strength in numbers

I think Democrats ought to be concerned, that the party has become almost prideful about the college-educated vote that it's getting, the support that Hillary Clinton is getting against Donald Trump.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

Stronger together is, I think, a preposition and a comparative adjective, but it's not really an action verb or what it is.

If an abduction is reported, it is dealt with in the same way as a kidnap.

One of the first things every press secretary assures you is, the boss has a wonderful sense of humor, because not to have a sense of humor is considered flagrantly un-American.

There is a cleavage and a divide in America like I have never seen before.

Donald Trump is not an unintelligent man.

White working-class voters or working-class voters have felt abandoned, have felt, in many senses, disparaged by the political leadership of America.

If you're on the other side from me, you're not simply wrong or ill-informed or mistaken. We don't share the same country, the same values. You may not be the same kind of an American I am.

I think this was as good a Democratic Convention [ this was my 24th convention] as I have seen since the 1976 convention, which nominated Jimmy Carter.I just thought it was a spectacularly successful convention. I don't think Hillary Clinton's speech was spectacular, but I don't think she's a spectacular speaker.

I think the Republican Party is cursed. And it's cursed itself.

The organizing principle of the United States defensive foreign policy had been opposition to the Soviet Union. There is no more Soviet Union.

Dan Coats, retiring senator from Indiana, a mild-mannered man, a former United States ambassador to Germany, former congressman, said of Ted Cruz he's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen.And he said, you can quote me on that.

If Donald Trump does lose, being revealed as this bizarre personality, Ted Cruz is not going to be what Republicans are looking for in 2020.

I think Donald Trump is obviously the more colorful, the more flamboyant, the more dominant personality.

Whether it's her [ Hillary Clinton] guarded privacy or whatever else, I mean, there has got to be some sense that this is a human being that I can identify.

Hillary Clinton should get a bounce out of her convention, I mean a bounce in the polls. I think it's probably conceded that Donald Trump got about a three-point bounce out of his conventions. He's closed the gap that much.

Democrats, if they're smart and they're not brain-dead, are doing two things right now.They're having self-deprecating humor written for them. There was no humor in Cleveland. And they are not making this a Donald Trump.

There are people who know Hillary Clinton who tell wonderful stories about her, how likable she is, how funny she is; 99 percent of American people don't - have never seen that side of her.

Hillary Clinton has emphasized that she is afflicted with or possessed of the responsibility gene.

The person you're choosing is going to be 90 feet down the hall for four years. That's a pretty intimate and close relationship, and it better be somebody you're comfortable with, you like, you trust, you look forward to seeing, not someone you're coming up with creative ideas on how to avoid.

I think that the people that are publicly on Hillary Clinton's short list all are very congenial people. They're not people with personality or Captain Queeg problems.

The pattern of American presidential elections is that the more optimistic candidate, whether it's John Kennedy and let's get America moving again, Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America, or Barack Obama, yes, we can, always wins, or nearly always wins.

Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.

I personally believe that [Donald Trump] is wrong on the condition of America.

We're not being invaded by undocumented immigrants who are coming to kill police officers and commit crimes. And I don't think most Americans think it's true.

But take the Russia issue. You open up the convention, and you have got a report that the Democratic Party has been hacked by the Russians, e-mails, the e-mails of the Democratic Party, which is a headline and words that you don't want, if you're Hillary Clinton's campaign.And Donald Trump immediately takes the story and basically steps on the advantage he has and say, well, the Russians, who am I to tell [Vladimir] Putin? You know, the Russians ought to come in and continue to hack our - and find out where the e-mails are.

In a strange way, Hillary Clinton was helped and victimized by Barack and Michelle Obama.Michelle Obama was probably better than Barack Obama, if you think about it.Her speech is a masterful, masterful speech. And she delivered it in a persuasively conversational tone.

It's not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives in the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of the parents every single day.

By a 2-1 margin, voters believe that Donald Trump would change business as usual in Washington, but by almost as large a margin, they believe that Hillary Clinton would be better in a crisis and less of a decisive margin she cares about people like them.

Americans don't like the way Washington operates. They don't like Washington. They don't like the way things are going.

There is no question that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan had been portrayed as a war-monger, somebody who couldn't do anything off a script. And the one debate with President Jimmy Carter, he stood toe-to-toe and reassured people that he wasn't bound and determined to start World War III on the spot and could make a coherent statement.

Americans don't like powerful figures who punch down, that is, who pick on someone less powerful and less able to speak for themselves than they are.

If Mitt Romney had got the percentage Ronald Reagan did of Hispanics, he would have defeated Barack Obama.

The Republicans are looking at a country that is going to be a majority minority country in just over a generation. And they are an increasingly white party.

The reality is that the Republicans twice had Mitt Romney as a potential nominee. They chose him in 2008 - 2012. In 2008 and 2012, he had been the most get tough on illegal immigrants, on undocumented immigrants, illegals, as he called them, accused John McCain of wanting to give them Social Security checks, accused Mike Huckabee selling out to them with the DREAM Act in Arkansas, was really the most strident.

When you have got military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, they're intended for one purpose. And that is to inflict as much damage on human beings in as short as time as possible.

All about midterm elections is turnouts. And turnout is measured by enthusiasm, intensity, how interested are people. And President Obama - candidate Obama had it on his side in 2008. The Democrats had it on their side in 2006. The enthusiasm, the intensity, the passion was all on their side.

Tim Kaine reminds me of - Peter Hart.Tim Kaine is a good neighbor. He's kind of the dependable, you know, friendly, helpful. And, you know, he would be over there. He would give you a hand if there were a problem at the house.

Peter Hart, the pollster, has a question when he asks about presidential or vice presidential candidates, what kind of a neighbor would they be? And several Democrats - George W. Bush was always seen to be a good friendly neighbor who would pick up the newspapers if you were out of town or check your mail.

Barack Obama did get a higher percentage of the vote than anybody has in this country in 20 years. I mean, it was a resounding victory. I mean, whether his core constituency was 20 percent or what, his electoral constituency, which is how we measure elections, was 53 percent, which was, you know, historically high, the highest of any Democrat, other than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

I think she [Hillary Clinton] would be far superior to President [Barack] Obama, who is basically remote, aloof and not involved with - he doesn't deal with members of Congress.

[Hillary Clinton] showed, while in the Senate, that ability to connect and reach across and to forge alliances. I think she will be better [than Barack Obama]. But I think the problem with connecting emotionally with the people remains at large is - in a wholesale way.

The Democratic Party is a coalition. Its strength and its weakness is, it's a coalition of interest groups, caucuses. It's a lot less homogeneous than the Republican Party, where people tend to believe the same things and oftentimes look alike.

The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.

Tim Kaine kind of gives the warmer, human face of the Democrats.

Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

The Republicans, they are in the danger of rooting for the country to fail. They look bad that way, I mean, and I want to say to them, cheer up, Republicans. Eventually, things will get worse.

Benjamin Netanyahu is no Winston Churchill. Whatever else he, is he's not a Winston Churchill. He basically violated the great rule, which is it's better to mislead the people and to lose an election than to mislead the people and win an election.

I have my disagreements with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.

The studies that show the reason Washington real estate is booming and there are so many lobbyists in town, it does pay.

The lobbying over China most favored nation trading status was disgusting. There's no way in hell that MFN would have passed in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000 if all these companies hadn't come in flooding and making campaign contributions and ask for people's support. That drove the debate. Every year was the allure of corporate dollars flooding into members' bank accounts.

Politics, they all - talked to the insiders.

Big money buys access in Washington, and access purchases influence. It is as simple as that. And they have basically given a green light, a further green light, after Citizens United, to the biggest money to have the bigger voice in our politics, and to sound out and drown out the voice of just ordinary citizens.

There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.

George W. Bush in 2000 went to private financing for the nomination, but he accepted public funding in the general. And, quite frankly, so did - it was broken in 2008, when Barack Obama decided he wasn't going to do that.

Every measurement of where you have more public confidence in creating jobs, American prosperity, controlling crime, health care, providing education, all of these standards, Bill Clinton has considerably high marks. The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack.