Quotes from Dick Morris

I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party's agenda and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the Left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the Right, take the idea that they have to work for a living and that there are time limits.

Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

Anybody who thinks that getting a communication from a voter in your district is spam - that guy is pork. Roast pork unless he changes his point of view.

Spontaneous combustion of grassroots politics is the future.

As Bob Dole found out, you can't keep a positive image while being your party's mouthpiece in Congress. That's why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president.

'Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.

Message is more important than money. Issues are more central than image. Strategy matters more than tactics. Positives work better than negatives. Substance is more salient than scandal. Issues are more powerful than image, and strategy more important than spin. The more partisan you are, the less effective you will be.

Franklin Roosevelt didn't poll, because he had great political instincts. Now we have polls; we don't need instincts. But is that a change in principle? Is it a change in principle that we use a Xerox instead of carbon paper? It's of the same order of magnitude.

I didn't do what they said I did. I may have done enough so that I don't know if I can prove my innocence.

The stronger Hillary is, the weaker she is. The more she seems like a likely presidential winner, the more difficult the senate race becomes in New York. It's perfect.

The old rules and the old methods of winning are gone.

When the history of the 20th century is written, there are going to be some pretty obscure people who are entitled to sainthood. And they're not going to be well-known.

Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have one central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get re-elected, use the '04 primaries and general election to clean out the underbrush of competing Democratic candidates, and proceed unimpeded to the '08 nomination.

The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television.

Bill Clinton's incredibly bold idea was to change the grant to a transaction: we'll give you something, but we demand something back; the way he would phrase it is, 'We'll give you opportunity, but you have to take responsibility.'

Truth is that which cannot be proved false.

I will not subject my wife, family or friends to the sadistic vitriol of yellow journalism. I will not dignify such journalism with a reply or an answer. I never will.

I think that the reason Clinton chose Gore was that he was an example of what Clinton was like. He was kind of almost like the yellow magic marker that you use to highlight the text so that you can really remember what are the most salient features of it.

'Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

I love Karl Rove. He elected Bush.

There is a no-man's land in our politics: on the one hand, bounded by what we know to be true, and on the other hand, bounded by what the media says is politically correct. And that's where Donald Trump lives. And it's our failure to admit what we all know to be true in the guise of political correctness that fuels the Trump candidacy.

Take whatever position you want, but do take a position, because once you do, ample money awaits you on either side.