230 Quotes by Rachel Maddow

It is a rare man or woman who is ever really changed by ascension to high office, or tempered by the solemnity of the oaths they have sworn or by the national duties they have shouldered. And Spiro Agnew was certainly not among that rare breed.

Social security isn’t a ponzi scheme. It’s not bankrupting us. It’s not an outrage. It is working.

The artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it's privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. In Econ 101, they teach that the big-picture fight over national priorities is guns versus butter. Now it's butter versus margarine—guns get a pass.Overall, we're weaker for it, and at enormous cost.

Sarah Palin uses me as a laugh line in her stump speeches. If you're willing to turn me into a joke, you should also be willing to talk to me.

When civilians are not asked to pay any price, it's easy to be at war - not just to intervene in a foreign land in the first place, but to keep on fighting there. The justifications for staying at war don't have to be particularly rational or cogently argued when so few Americans are making the sacrifice that it takes to stay.

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.

The thing about rights is they're not actually supposed to be voted on. That's why they're called rights.

Agnew was like Nixon's id -- without the burden of much actual knowledge or curiosity or responsibility to the country at large.

I had turned over a log and exposed to the light a scurrying colony of unpleasant creatures whose only reaction was one of annoyance that I had been so crass as to disturb their settled way of life. (Elliot Richardson)