Top 35 Carol Moseley Braun Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

2. “Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

3. “Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

4. “We must invest in infrastructure development and rebuilding communities to create jobs.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

5. “I’ve always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

6. “It’s time to take the ‘Men Only’ sign off the White House door.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

7. “I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

8. “I want to rebuild America.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

9. “There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

10. “The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn’t matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We’re all in the same boat now.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

11. “We’re failing our children with education, we’re failing our environment.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

12. “Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that’s smaller than you and you beat them, where’s the honor in that?”

— Carol Moseley Braun

13. “It’s hard to be the first. It’s almost as if I’m subject to a different level of inspection.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

14. “I really think that’s the key, part of the spiritual renewal that America needs to have, the notion that we really can have confidence in a better tomorrow.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

15. “I believe that our message of rebuilding America is one that will resonate with the American people.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

16. “It’s not impossible for a woman – a Black woman – to become President.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

17. “To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don’t tap people’s phones and poke into their e-mail and you don’t arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

18. “All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I’d like them to say, Carol’s basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol’s kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

19. “I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

20. “I’m used to people not paying me a whole lot of attention and underestimating me and, frankly, for me a big challenge is to have people believe that I can be the president of the United States.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

21. “The failure in Ohio to have adequate voting capacity for the people who were registered and eligible to vote was an absolute denial of their right to vote.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

22. “The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

23. “Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

24. “New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers – one from either party.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

25. “And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

26. “I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

27. “I think that we have a responsibility to make certain that we are fiscally responsible in order to assure, frankly, future generations don’t have to pay our bills.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

28. “Im committed to universal health coverage and education.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

29. “I was very productive as a senator for my state.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

30. “My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn’t try to make the world a better place were strange.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

31. “I think its time to get a reapportionment process that frankly takes out the incumbency protection and the raw politics of the process.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

32. “There are a number of steps that we can take to reinvigorate and rebuild the economic and the physical infrastructure of our country and then to rebuild us, frankly, on a spiritual level.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

33. “I think Americans want to believe in this country again.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

34. “We have gone into a war, an unelected president sending us into a war that the Congress frankly had no right, I believe, to authorize.”

— Carol Moseley Braun

35. “If I lose, I’m going to retire from politics, practice law, and wear bright leather pants.”

— Carol Moseley Braun