Quotes from Lawrence O'Donnell

The great thing about going to Malawi is I have no contact for at least a week with anything that's happening back in Washington.

When you get off to an African country like Malawi - which is pretty removed from everything and pretty seriously off the grid - and you see the struggle of life that goes on there, it's a completely different thing than what happens here.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

I've often wondered what it would have been like if we'd had cable news during the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Show business comes with wonderfully long vacations, like the life of a college professor.

There was the slow discovery for me in the early '80s that Republicans are people too... That Republicans are perfectly reasonable people... and that Republicans can be right about something.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

I went to Harvard College, grew up in Boston, and went to high school in Boston.

I tend not to look at Twitter in the morning; I try to force myself not to, for time management. I'll look at it on the way to work.

I ended up going to Harvard College, which was about as likely in my neighborhood as going to the moon.

I have no idea what I would be, I really don't have the vaguest idea what I would be, if my father had remained a Boston cop. I don't have any idea what I would have thought the horizon was.

I majored in economics in college. Certain things were just out, like chemistry or biology, or science or math, that was just out of the question. That's just an aptitude impossibility, I couldn't have done it.

To expose a first draft to anyone's ears other than your own is indecent.

Why in general, when you're putting together a White House staff and putting together a good one, you're looking for someone there who is not someone who's going to be heavy-handed.

The United States is and will continue to be the most important country in the world, economically, militarily, intellectually. There's nothing that four years of Trump can do to stop that. What it is no longer, during the Trump years, is the leading source for better governmental arrangements between countries.

The Trump view of immigration defies our history. Immigration is a transaction that has historically benefited the country.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

No one outside of the Black Caucus would be happy to see Alcee Hastings in a chairmanship. I first saw Alcee Hastings in his impeachment trial in the Senate.

Shepard Smith has frequently been the lone voice of reason on Fox News.

The Republican base - the Evangelical get-out-the-vote troops - are going to be devastated when they discover how many closeted gay Republicans were involved in policing Mark Foley in the House of Representatives.

Charlie Rangel is angry about the Iraq war, the one that Henry Kissinger has told us we can't win. Thanks, Henry, but most Americans figured that out before you did. Rangel saw combat in Korea. Kissinger has only seen combat on TV. That might have something to do with why Kissinger thinks our troops should stay in Iraq even though we can't win.

The First Amendment protects the news media and the news media knows how to use it. Donald Trump doesn't understand it, he's never going to understand it.

I was an extreme leftist-anarchist. Now, I guess I'm a European socialist who's locked into American citizenship, without complaint.

Bill O'Reilly is a socialist. He is in favor of Medicare, he is in favor of Social Security. Those are socialist programs.