Quotes from Lawrence O'Donnell

Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist.

I've never understood the value of putting someone on television to lie, knowing that they're going to lie ahead of time, knowing that that is their deal: to lie ahead of time. There is zero news value in that.

I do strive to be the Andy Kaufman of TV news.

There's something about the power of influential correspondents tweeting something that has become the fastest way to get a story moving. It will turn into something much faster and much bigger than it would have.

I love some of the most hateful tweets. I think they're very funny. In the negative attacks on me, there are frequently some real displays of humor. I want to reply, but I won't, because there are all sorts of other people making serious points that I care about, and I don't want them to be discouraged.

I don't trust news sources, and neither should other people. They should use them in the same way that they use medical opinions and get more than one on the important issues. Trust is the most precious thing you could possibly give to another person. But to institutions? Publications?

NBC has created a monster and it is called Donald Trump.

I believe the United States should join the rest of the world through paid family and medical leave. It would cost us a $1.61 a week in an increase in payroll tax.I think that's a great investment.

There are people out there who disagree with me politically, and understand the limits of that disagreement. It doesn't mean we disagree as people on basic human needs.

I've never designed anything in my life to accommodate MSNBC. I've had to squeeze it in.

Many chiefs of staff are close, very close, to their bosses on Capitol Hill.

I grew up a few years after John Kelly in an identical neighborhood in the other side of Boston and I went to high school in John Kelly's neighborhood. I know the neighborhood John Kelly comes from, I know the culture.

Every cable news channel was a very big business success before Donald Trump started lying about Barack Obama's birth certificate. And they were all making more money than they knew what to do with then and more money than Donald Trump has ever seen in his life.

Roger Ailes's effect on politics was much longer-lasting than Richard Nixon's, even though Nixon was elected president twice.

Nixon's adroit use of television in 1952 was well ahead of its time.

People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been very busy educating America about just how much socialism we have, from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public universities, and how much we love that. The truth is that there is no pure socialist or capitalist economy on earth.

I said, we should allow no Syrian refugees into the country, not even women or children.

In the summer of 2007, I was in New York for some meetings and... I rented a car and just drove to Staten Island to take a glance and remind myself about it. I ended up staying a couple of days there in a hotel and I've been all over the island several times since.

There are plenty of odd couple Congressmen who have roomed together on Capitol Hill, but I have never heard of a chief of staff who rooms with his boss. It is beyond unusual.

In pre-election polling, momentum is more important than position, and in primary polling, national numbers are useless.

Successful presidential campaigns follow a two-part strategy. For Republicans, Richard Nixon described it as running to the right in the primaries and running back to the center in the general election. For Democrats, the idea is to go to the left in the primaries, then to the center.

You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospitals and medical research, and you can do that at the same time and still retain an ability to function.

It's hard to get me outraged.

Practical European socialists have embraced the idea that the government has a role in healthcare and in supporting strong transportation systems that do not depend entirely on individual motor vehicles. And it turns out we're all socialists now, and there are very few Americans who understand that.