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Bernie Sanders Quotes (1941-)
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About Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. The U.S. Representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007, he is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history and a member of the Democratic caucus. Sanders ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 and 2020 Democratic nomination for president.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Bernie Sanders quotes.
“Today in America, the middle class is disappearing.”
“Billionaires and Wall Street should not be buying elections.”
“I learnt a lot about democracy in the schoolyards of Brooklyn, New York.”
“Occasionally, it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy.”
“transforming America is more than just elections. It's about changing our culture.”
“Americans' right to free speech should not be proportionate to their bank accounts.”
“Absolutely, in fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.”
“As the FEC fundraising deadline for 2019 approaches, I am once again asking for your financial support.”
“Look, at this particular moment in history, and perhaps at any moment in history, despair is not an option.”
“President Donald Trump’s own words helped inspire the worst act of antisemitic violence in American history.”
“Graduation should mark a joyous new beginning, not the start of an anxiety-ridden, decades-long financial bind.”
“America's first black president cannot and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK.”
“In my view, and we've introduced legislation to deal with this, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”
“We are living in a world where greed has become for the wealthiest people their own religion, and they make no apologies for it.”
“The difference between my socialism and Trump's socialism is, I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires.”
“Want to get on the front page of the paper? I have to make some vicious attack. I won't do that. I’m running an issue-oriented campaign.”
Bernie Sanders Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Bernie Sanders quotes by topic.
Bernie Sanders on Democratic socialism 8 quotes
“The difference between my socialism and Trump's socialism is, I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires.”
Bernie Sanders on Basic income 5 quotes
“There must be a guarantee that people receive what they need in order to live a dignified life.”
Bernie Sanders on Gaza war 5 quotes
“To start, we must demand an immediate end to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, which is causing an enormous number of civilian casualties and is in violation of international law. Israel is at war with Hamas, not innocent Palestinian men, women and children. Israel cannot bomb an entire neighborhood to take out one Hamas target. We don’t know if this campaign has been effective in degrading Hamas’s military capabilities. But we do know that a reported 70 percent of the casualties are women and children, and that 104 U.N. aid workers and 53 journalists have been killed. That’s not acceptable.”
Bernie Sanders on Stock market 3 quotes
“The business model of Wall Street is fraud. In my view, there is no better example than the recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.”
Bernie Sanders on Wall Street 3 quotes
“The business model of Wall Street is fraud. In my view, there is no better example than the recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.”
Bernie Sanders on Billionaire 2 quotes
“Billionaires and Wall Street should not be buying elections.”
Bernie Sanders on Fossil fuel 2 quotes
“We have a moral responsibility to help working families in the fossil fuel industry find new jobs.”
Bernie Sanders on Build Back Better Plan 2 quotes
“[The White House's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better framework is] by far the most significant piece of legislation ever passed in the world [to address climate]”
Bernie Sanders on Immigration to the United States 2 quotes
“This is a disgrace. No child should go hungry in the United States of America. My first executive orders will be to reverse every single thing President Trump has done to demonize and harm immigrants.”
Bernie Sanders on Health care 2 quotes
“After Clinton's failure to reform our health care system, we ended up with a cumbersome, profit-driven, consumer-unfriendly, inefficient health care delivery system dominated by insurance companies. And I mean dominated.”
Bernie Sanders on Capitalism 2 quotes
“Donald Trump himself, of course, is a major beneficiary of the massive amounts of corporate welfare. If you are the Trump family, you receive $885,000,000 worth of tax breaks and subsidies for your family’s housing empire that, among other things, was built on racial discrimination.… What Trump is about is socialism for the very rich. We are about socialism for working families. That’s the difference.”
What Bernie Sanders Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Bernie Sanders shared regarding contemporaries.
Bernie Sanders on Bill Clinton 4 quotes
“President Clinton, like Bush and Reagan before him, is supporting a trade policy that protects the interests and profits of multinational corporations, while compromising the interests of American workers.”
Bernie Sanders on Ronald Reagan 4 quotes
“Republicans in Washington love to talk about "welfare reform." They like to cite examples of low-income people without jobs who are "mooching" off the taxpayers of this country. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan focused on a "welfare queen" driving a Cadillac-who, it turned out, simply did not exist.”
Bernie Sanders on Donald Trump 3 quotes
“Donald Trump is a pathological liar.”
Bernie Sanders on Pope Francis 3 quotes
“When the pope speaks about "change," he is not talking about modest reforms or tinkering around the edges. He is talking about radical changes as to how the global economy functions, and in how we relate to the planet and to each other. Most importantly, he understands the urgency of the moment. We need real change now.”
Bernie Sanders on Ed Schultz 2 quotes
“Ed Schultz, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes provided us with the very fair coverage we received on MSNBC.”
Bernie Sanders on Franklin D. Roosevelt 2 quotes
“As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."”
Bernie Sanders on Hillary Clinton 2 quotes
“In 2003, I did everything I could to prevent George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq a war that Clinton supported. In one debate, when Hillary Clinton cited Henry Kissinger as a friend and mentor, I suggested that he was a terrible secretary of state, a war criminal, and would play no role in a Sanders administration.”
Bernie Sanders on Henry Kissinger 2 quotes
“In 2003, I did everything I could to prevent George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, a war that Clinton supported. In one debate, when Hillary Clinton cited Henry Kissinger as a friend and mentor, I suggested that he was a terrible secretary of state, a war criminal, and would play no role in a Sanders administration.”
Bernie Sanders on Warren Buffett 2 quotes
“Warren Buffett, one of the richest guys in the world, openly admits that his effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's. It's time to tell the billionaire class that if they want to enjoy the benefits of America, they have to accept their responsibilities, and they have to start paying their fair share of taxes.”
Bernie Sanders on Jeff Bezos 2 quotes
“In my view, it is totally absurd for the taxpayers of this country to have to subsidize people like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the wealthiest person in the world, worth over $150 billion. He should be paying all his employees a living wage, and a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage would be a step in the right direction toward making that happen.”
Bernie Sanders on Mitch McConnell 2 quotes
“While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to reconsider immigration reform in the 2015 session, he did find time to debate a proposal by Pennsylvania's Republican senator Pat Toomey to deny federal economic development assistance to "sanctuary cities," where police and other public agencies do not inquire into a person's immigration status during routine business.”
Bernie Sanders on Theodore Roosevelt 2 quotes
“If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. When it comes to Wall Street reform, that must be our bottom line. This is true not just because of the risk to our economy of another collapse and another bailout; it is also true because the current extreme concentration of ownership in the financial industry allows a very small number of huge financial institutions to have far too much economic and political power over this country. If Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican trustbuster, were alive today, he would say, "Break 'em up." And he would be right.”
Quotes About Bernie Sanders
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Bernie Sanders from others.
Sudiksha Kochi on Bernie Sanders 2 quotes
“WASHINGTON − Progressive firebrand Sen. Bernie Sanders said he believes President Donald Trump is “moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism" after Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to help quell immigration protests in Los Angeles. “This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the Constitution. He does not believe in the rule of law. My understanding is that the governor of California, the mayor of the city of Los Angeles did not request the National Guard, but he thinks he has a right to do anything he wants,” Sanders, a Vermont independent, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.””
Rin Velasco on Bernie Sanders 2 quotes
“With President Donald Trump's deployment of 700 Marines to Los Angeles, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the internet to offer his own thoughts. In a video posted to his X account, Sanders said the message he wishes to impart is not about the protests or the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the California city but something that affects all Americans everywhere. "What's going on is all about Trump's never-ending desire for more and more power," Sanders said. The Vermont senator said that the 45th and 47th president is overriding the California governor's authority in order to consolidate more power with the U.S. military. Sanders also said that Trump is trying to wrest control from the judicial and legislative branch of government as well as stamp out universities' independence and private law offices. "Now is the time for us to come together and stand against authoritarianism and for democracy," Sanders said.”
Kirsten Powers on Bernie Sanders
“Whether one agrees with the myriad solutions Sanders lays out in his book to stop the scourge of uber-capitalism, there is no question that he has accurately framed the problem as being about freedom. The Vermont senator has been nothing short of prophetic in warning against the dire consequences of a culture that prizes productivity above all else and coddles and venerates the super-rich. Perhaps most of all, Sanders has powerfully articulated — both in his campaigns and his latest book — the profound lack of decency and utter immorality of the current American economic system. Now it’s up to all of us to decide what to do about it.”
Nikki Haley on Sanders' response on Bernie Sanders
Rebecca Solnit on Bernie Sanders
“It pained me that so many people regarded Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign as a bitter defeat rather than a resounding victory in proving there was a constituency and momentum for progressive ideas that could be built upon in the years to come.”
Zeeshan Aleem on Bernie Sanders 3 quotes
“Operating with the baseline assumption that Sanders runs only if Biden doesn’t, another condition is that no serious politician with Sanders’ worldview runs as well. If a credible advocate for democratic socialism and anti-imperialism steps up to the plate, then Sanders should use the occasion to pass the torch to the next generation and act as a surrogate for his chosen candidate. (Sanders’ circle has reportedly encouraged Rep. Ro Khanna of California to consider a presidential bid, toward that very end it seems.) Assuming those conditions are met, another Sanders run wouldn’t excite me the way his first two runs did, but it could still be a force for tremendous good. Sanders has become an extraordinarily influential politician through his previous two runs. In 2020, most of the major Democratic candidates took on some of his signature policy proposals like "Medicare for All" — or positioned themselves by holding them at some kind of measured distance. They did this because they believed that Sanders was tapping into real desires in the progressive Democratic electorate, and because they viewed Sanders as a serious threat whose ideas should be co-opted or moderated instead of ignored.”
Ross Barkan on Bernie Sanders 5 quotes
“All of this is hypothetical, of course, because the 79-year-old Biden insists he is running again. If he does, no Democrat can defeat him. And if Biden bows out, the front-runner for the nomination will be Kamala Harris. Harris cannot clear the field like Biden can, but she will carry a decisive edge as the sitting vice-president. The trouble for liberals is that Harris is at least as unpopular as Biden, and her prior campaign for the presidency was a disaster. Against Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, neither Biden nor Harris inspire a great deal of confidence. But all of this has obscured, for the most part, another dispiriting reality for the many progressives and leftists who have grown used to having one of their own run competitive races for the presidency: There is no obvious heir to Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator, now 80, will almost certainly not run for president a third time. Sanders is an unabashedly left-wing democratic socialist who won major states in both of his presidential bids. If 2020 was a step back for Sanders — he won far fewer votes against Biden than he did against the polarizing Hillary Clinton four years earlier — he still broke through on major terrain, beating the field in enormous states like California and growing his support with working-class Latinos. He was wildly popular with voters under 30. Outside of perhaps Jesse Jackson or George McGovern, there was never a presidential candidate like Sanders in modern American history: someone who contested a Democratic primary from the far left, against the full brunt of the political Establishment, and finished runner-up each time.”
Cori Bush The Forerunner on Bernie Sanders
“The emcee announced that next we'd hear from a presidential candidate, a U.S. senator from Vermont. The politician's name wasn't familiar to me, but I turned around to see if I might recognize him. I didn't. I saw an older white man with white hair. His wife smiled and waved in my direction. I turned back around and returned to fidgeting with the flatware. As he spoke, I listened, but I would be lying if I said I was engaged. But then I noticed that he was speaking frankly about the connection between racial justice and income inequality, and I heard him name mass movement as a solution. "We need to bring people together to take on the powers that be," he said. "When thousands and millions of people stand together, there is no stopping us. We can succeed." He had other clear ideas for solutions: "We need to demilitarize the police," he told the crowd, and finally, I heard him say, "Black lives do matter." I spun around. I couldn't believe what I'd heard. Every single other candidate refused to acknowledge the particular precarity we face in this country as Black people...I hadn't known anything about Bernie Sanders before I saw him onstage at the conference, but his boldness that day had opened my eyes. With his wild gesticulations, and unapologetic manner, he'd shown me that I didn't have to temper what I believed, even in a staid environment. From Bernie, I learned that I could run as myself. Now that I was vying for a Senate seat, I looked him up and scoured his website to learn more about him.”
Ed Kilgore on Bernie Sanders
“Since Biden circa 2022 is often compared to 1970s Jimmy Carter due to a combination of sluggish job approval ratings, unhappy progressive activists, and big-time economic problems (especially inflation), it is germane to observe that Carter managed to soundly defeat Ted Kennedy — the liberal lion of the 1970s and subsequent decades — in the 1980 nomination contest. Are there any Ted Kennedys around right now to mobilize progressive anti-administration grievances into a successful insurgent candidacy? Someday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have that stature — but not now. Indeed, the only potential rival from any wing of the party who is in that position is Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden. And even if there were some Kennedy-like figure available, would the fight disable the Democratic Party (as it arguably did in 1980) more than slogging ahead with the incumbent?”
Monica Crowley on on Bernie Sanders
“Nobody in their right mind believes Joe Biden is going to be on the ticket in 2024 and the vice president is certainly not up to this job. So, you've got people like Liz Warren who are now making all kinds of noises about taking the leadership reins of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders this week talked about, well, if Biden's not on the ticket, I may make another run at the age of 135, but the progressives are really agitated because they're saying, "Look, we're going to lose in November because we have a messaging issue," which is not the case, "but also because we have not delivered on our agenda."”
Sanders Says Deficit Concerns 'Seem to Melt Away' When It's Time to Fill Pentagon Coffers, Jake Johnson, on Bernie Sanders
“Sanders was one of just four members of the Senate Democratic caucus to vote against advancing the latest NDAA, which is on track to pass the upper chamber this week. Joining Sanders in voting no were Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). The House approved its version of the NDAA in September. None of the corporate-backed House Democrats currently holding up the reconciliation bill over purported concerns about its costs voted against the proposed Pentagon budget increase, which progressive lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to block. In his floor speech Wednesday, Sanders pointed out that the Senate's 2022 military policy bill proposes spending "$37 billion more than President Trump's last defense budget and $25 billion more than what President Biden requested....Sanders' remarks on the NDAA... came as Democrats in Congress also worked to finalize the Build Back Better Act, a reconciliation package whose social spending and climate provisions have been gutted to satisfy right-wing members of the majority party such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).”
Carl Hart on Bernie Sanders
“Why is it OK for me to admit having used marijuana but not heroin? I know why, of course. Because most people have been led to believe that heroin is inherently a dangerous drug, whereas pot is just a harmless giggle. It's frustrating. Consider the remarks made by senator Bernie Sanders at the start of 2018 on this subject: "Marijuana is not the same as heroin. No one who has seriously studied the issue believes that marijuana should be classified as a Schedule I drug beside killer drugs like heroin." As politicians go, Sanders seems to be a fair-minded, well-intentioned individual. But his drug perspective is ignorant. Here's why: In order for a drug, any drug, to produce an effect in the brain, it must first bind to a unique site recognized by that drug. This site, this "receptor"-a specialized structure that recognizes and responds to a particular chemical-is endogenous, meaning that it's in all of us. We also have an endogenous chemical that binds to each of these receptors. That means, each of our brains contains heroin-like and THC-like chemicals and their corresponding receptors.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Bernie Sanders
About Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. The U.S. Representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007, he is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history and a member of the Democratic caucus. Sanders ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 and 2020 Democratic nomination for president.