Quotes from Bernie Sanders

The federal minimum wage had not been raised since 2009. Even worse, the $2.13 an hour tipped minimum wage for waiters, waitresses, bartenders, barbers, and hairstylists had not been raised since 1991—my first year in Congress.

This country has reached a point in its history where it must determine whether we truly embrace the inspiring words in our Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Or do we simply accept that we will continue to be ruled by a small number of extremely wealthy and powerful people who are motivated by greed and could care less for the general welfare?

But oligarchy is not a uniquely Russian phenomenon. It's a global reality that our corporate media chooses to examine in only the narrowest of terms. What about the oligarchs of America? What about the perverse and destructive role that they play in shaping our society? Why is there no acknowledgment, by our political and media elites, that there is an American oligarchy every bit as dangerous as the oligarchies we decry in other countries?

And in 2006, just before the financial system began to collapse, an analyst from Standard & Poor's, a credit-rating agency that consistently and knowingly gave the highest ratings to near-worthless mortgage-backed securities, said in an internal e-mail, "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.

To me, a very basic political principle is that you cannot take on the establishment when you take their money.

These same six banks control 95 percent of all derivatives and hold more than 40 percent of all bank deposits in the United States.

The Bible, and virtually every major religion on earth, has a term for this practice. It's called "usury." In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the seventh circle of hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.

Many of those people actually work, but are still below the federal poverty line. Meanwhile, health care costs are going up, child-care costs are going up, college costs are going up, and housing costs are going up. But wages are not. Low-income workers need a significant boost in what they earn if they are going to live in dignity in today's economy.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the seventh circle of hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.

We must also cap ATM fees at $2.00. People should not have to pay a 10 percent fee for withdrawing $40 of their own money out of an ATM.

Given that employer-based insurance is the way most Americans get their coverage, small- and medium-sized businesses are forced to spend an enormous amount of time and energy determining how they can get the most cost-effective coverage for their employees.

Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United and end the movement toward oligarchy that we are seeing in this country.

Together we have sent a message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California.

You know, 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.

I love jazz because it's so American; you know it's our Only Original Art Form. It just goes against the greed of corporate America and the Wall Street Banks that are destroying our economy.

At the insistence of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 passed legislation that required the Postal Service to prefund, over a 10-year period, 75 years of future retiree health benefits.

The Federal Reserve has the responsibility to protect the credit rights of consumers.

If there is a silver lining in the action of MSNBC against Keith Olbermann, it is that people will now pay more attention to the political role of corporate media in America.

In 49 countries around the world, including all of Europe, people have the opportunity of knowing whether or not they are eating food which contains genetically engineered ingredients. In the United States, we don't.

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

But what I intend to do, the day after Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States, is to do everything I can to make sure she goes forward as progressively as she can.

Together, together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America, and that revolution, our revolution, continues!

If the U.S. can transform its domestic market for HIV/AIDS drugs, it will certainly transform the world market and make HIV/AIDS drugs more affordable for everyone, everywhere.

For every $1 billion we invest in public transportation, we create 30,000 jobs, save thousands of dollars a year for each commuter, and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions.