Quotes from Chris Matthews

Anybody can say anything they want. Hillary Clinton can control her own campaign.

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

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

President Barack Obama benefits from the shared experience and wisdom of top national security and foreign policy advisers, many of them career professionals.

They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.'

Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle.

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.

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 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.

He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

He's a beautiful man, but I'm sorry he doesn't agree with my political philosophy Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

It's not such a bad idea, at any time, to be seen as FIGHTING, especially when you might just win.

In politics, nothing good ever comes from the unexpected.

The author, at the time a Carter speechwriter in the 1980 campaign, showed visible distress at his boss's performance and was warned by a friend in the traveling press, lest he become the story.

The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.

The author deduces the best way James Baker serve Reagan as Chief of Staff was to continually remind him why he wanted to be president.

He'd made a name for himself out there in the world beyond not just in spite of the distinctly unfashionable persona he presented, but, perhaps, BECAUSE of it.

Earlier that year, at the hundredth anniversary of his Harvard club, a member was talking about the spirit of Harvard College and saying how glad he was that the school had produced neither "a Joseph McCarthy or an Alger Hiss." On hearing that coupling, Kennedy jumped from his chair. "How dare you compare the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!" and left the room. As for his father, the very thought

It took this tragic moment in America's racial history to forge the bond that Robert Kennedy had been seeking. The recognition of shared victimhood played a part. His reference to a "member of my family" was the sole public mention he was ever to make regarding his own relationship to what he would call "the events of November 1963.

Each man had come to know the other's caricature as a lie.

It won a commitment from the Soviet leader to take no action that would influence the 1962 congressional elections. Both the White House and the Kremlin recognized that any instance of Soviet aggression could only play into the hands of the more hawkish Republicans.

He was experienced enough to spot the downside of doing the right thing.

Shared history was the coin of the realm.

The Russian people were just like us. They were victims of their own government. Ronald Reagan