Top 120 Chris Matthews Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Paying tax is not a punishment. It’s a responsibility.”

— Chris Matthews

2. “While we may not mind being used, we resent deeply being made to feel discarded.”

— Chris Matthews

3. “If you want to play a game, go to where it’s played and find a way to get in. Things happen when you get in the game.”

— Chris Matthews

4. “The president of the United States, whoever it is, deserves a certain level of reverence and respect just because of the office he holds.”

— Chris Matthews

5. “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.”

— Chris Matthews

6. “When lightning strikes you want to be there, right there in the room. You, not everybody’s going to say yes to you. Just don’t ever say no to yourself, ever.”

— Chris Matthews

7. “My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

— Chris Matthews

8. “I don’t believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question – you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you.”

— Chris Matthews

9. “People don’t like getting dirty or living in an environment that’s been contaminated and is covered in hazardous waste.”

— Chris Matthews

10. “That is the voice of God because its the voice of truth and experience.”

— Chris Matthews

11. “People – Hollywood doesn’t talk about how bad cigarette smells when it smells like they wake up in bed with somebody who has been smoking the night before.”

— Chris Matthews

12. “You can be Mitt Romney with three marriages and a disastrous speakership, kicked out of the speakership, being reprimanded by the House of Representatives and fined and all that stuff, it doesn’t matter if you sing the right tune with the right tone these days.”

— Chris Matthews

13. “People do have a – people, unlike politicians, are allowed to change their minds. People are allowed to look back and say, you know what, all things considered, I don’t think that was the smart move.”

— Chris Matthews

14. “To become a saint in the Catholic Church, the normal procedure is, beatification, requiring one miracle in your name, then canonization, roughly in five years or longer, to become a saint, a second miracle.”

— Chris Matthews

15. “I know, when I look into the eyes of my own children, the look of wonder when I speak of life back in the ’60s. That’s why the Rolling Stones are such a hit even in their 60s, why Dennis Hopper is so compelling, even when he’s making pitches for something unhip as long-term financial planning.”

— Chris Matthews

16. “Right now, the old guys, the old farts, if you will, are still running the show, and the women haven’t gotten their place yet at all.”

— Chris Matthews

17. “Around the globe, millions more are mourning the death and celebrating the life of Pope John Paul II. Could any other world leader have drawn so many people to one place?”

— Chris Matthews

18. “Sarah Palin – now don’t laugh – is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she’s ‘collaborating’ on a book. What an embarrassment! It’s one of these ‘I told you,’ books that jocks do.”

— Chris Matthews

19. “I think a lot it was the theology, that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad, that somehow if we broke apart the rejectionist states, like Iraq, then the whole Middle East would reconfigure itself into a more favorable environment for democracy and Israel and us.”

— Chris Matthews

20. “You don’t say, like the Bush crowd, ‘I got this guy over here and I don’t like him and I’m gonna get him, whether you back me or not.’”

— Chris Matthews

21. “We in America count on the profit motive to get people to do the right thing. That’s our basic American notion when it comes to business.”

— Chris Matthews

22. “While Jeb Bush finds himself mired in the muck of an intramural fight in his own party over his remarks about the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton is sticking to the low-key strategy, and it looks like it’s working.”

— Chris Matthews

23. “Isn’t it odd that the guy was politically correct in one particularly weird way. Bill Clinton never lit a cigar.”

— Chris Matthews

24. “I’m impressed that people out there in Pennsylvania, deer hunter country, have had it with these stupid wars, that they don’t go along with the neocon theology, they don’t go along with the big money people or the evangelicals that always seem to want to fight, especially in the Middle East.”

— Chris Matthews

25. “When I hear Rand Paul, who is much younger, saying wars are verkakte, I agree with him.”

— Chris Matthews

26. “The difference between me and them is that I’ll look at Jesse Jackson and I’ll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they’ll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.”

— Chris Matthews

27. “In life, as in death, Pope John Paul II was one of the most visible people on Earth.”

— Chris Matthews

28. “The pope has been called many things, historic figure, spiritual leader, moral force. But a growing chorus of voices has begun to refer to him as John Paul II the Great, in other words, as a saint.”

— Chris Matthews

29. “I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn’t the least bit interested. Why? Why isn’t he interested in the world? Because here’s the bad news for him: He’s in the world now.”

— Chris Matthews

30. “I’m center left, but I think – most things, left on some, center on some, right on very few.”

— Chris Matthews

31. “If Bernie Sanders hasn’t been able to draw a contrast with Hillary Clinton, why is he doing so well, a guy – most people never heard of this fellow before.”

— Chris Matthews

32. “Medicare, getting through that in the ’60s, after Kennedy’s assassination, where there was such an emotional desire to do something to carry on his agenda.”

— Chris Matthews

33. “Canonization in modern times is a very, almost scientific process.”

— Chris Matthews

34. “I think also people in states like Pennsylvania know that a lot of money and effort and time needs to be spent on knitting America back together, on the bridges and the roads and the infrastructure and the education.”

— Chris Matthews

35. “I don’t know why his lawyers didn’t tell him, ‘You don’t have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don’t have to answer.’”

— Chris Matthews

36. “It was like an aphrodisiac. Actors would say let’s have another cigarette on that great scenes, and they’d blow smoke in each other’s face.”

— Chris Matthews

37. “I love what Joe Eszterhas written about Bill Clinton. It’s hilarious, Clinton as a rock star, which is the way we should remember him.”

— Chris Matthews

38. “Here’s our policy. It’s Unite the world against terrorism.”

— Chris Matthews

39. “I’ll make it official. I care about Don Draper and what happens to him and I’m not the only one who does.”

— Chris Matthews

40. “Five years from now, 10 years from now, there’s going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they’re going to be nationalistic, they’re going to be religious, and they’re going to be militant.”

— Chris Matthews

41. “Presidents aren’t supposed to spit, at least not obviously.”

— Chris Matthews

42. “I think, internally, we Catholics have known this for a long time. I think we’re just thrilled and grateful that the rest of the world now is sharing in the esteem and gratitude that we’ve had for Pope John Paul II for 26 and a half years.”

— Chris Matthews

43. “There ought to be an onus on the people that want a law, rather than people that don’t need a new law.”

— Chris Matthews

44. “Just look at who won the third debate between Bush and Gore. I knew Bush won, because people liked him more. People just didn’t like Gore. But all the journalists thought Gore won big, he cleaned the guy’s clock.”

— Chris Matthews

45. “Hillary Clinton follows a cardinal rule in politics – don’t commit to a decision before you have to.”

— Chris Matthews

46. “I’m not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don’t want to play to that crowd. I don’t.”

— Chris Matthews

47. “It’s a fact of life that positive reasons don’t always get people to vote. You need some negative reasons.”

— Chris Matthews

48. “While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.”

— Chris Matthews

49. “The fact that younger people are more inclined to socialism may well come with the fact that so many young people’s first experience with capitalism is as a debtor.”

— Chris Matthews

50. “You can’t be loved for long if you’re not feared.”

— Chris Matthews