Chris Matthews Quotes

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we’re dead. They’re not going to give up their religion.

I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn’t the least bit interested. Why? Why isn’t he interested in the world? Because here’s the bad news for him: He’s in the world now.

Keep your enemies in front of you.

Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, ‘Well, that can’t happen.’

I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man’s paying for it, I’d have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, ‘Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.’

You know, there were 29 Democratic votes for censure in the Senate. And if the Republicans had any sense, they would have censured him before the ’98 midterm election, and they would have won the election.

You don’t know whether he’s thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.

The Democrats just don’t have a foreign policy that they’re willing to defend, that they’re willing to use to take down the president’s. We’re dealing with the power of suggestion here.

My audience is much more center right, or centrist.

Why didn’t we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?

We supported the contras. We’re not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.

You don’t say, like the Bush crowd, ‘I got this guy over here and I don’t like him and I’m gonna get him, whether you back me or not.’

I tell my staff, we’re riding a tour bus around, and we’re going to stop and look at some weird stuff – but we’re taking our viewers around safely. They’re just looking out the window at it. I’m trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don’t think it, I know it. But I can’t be for the war.

I can’t find a reason to be for this war. I’ve looked, and I can’t, so I’m not.

Five years from now, 10 years from now, there’s going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they’re going to be nationalistic, they’re going to be religious, and they’re going to be militant.

And then there’s Israel – a lot of people support Israel, and it’s important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it’s all mixed together. It’s a combination of motives.

Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel – the people who don’t want to deal with Arafat, who don’t want a Palestinian state – the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It’s the same policy and the same people.

We’ve got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we’re setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

The difference between me and them is that I’ll look at Jesse Jackson and I’ll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they’ll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.

I don’t know why his lawyers didn’t tell him, ‘You don’t have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don’t have to answer.’

I’m not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don’t want to play to that crowd. I don’t.