Top 90 Howard Dean Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds.”

— Howard Dean

2. “You have the power to take our country back.”

— Howard Dean

3. “I’ve waffled before. I’ll waffle again.”

— Howard Dean

4. “I don’t care what you label me as long as you call me president.”

— Howard Dean

5. “At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.”

— Howard Dean

6. “Barry Goldwater once said, ‘I’d rather be right than president.’ I can’t tell you how much I disagree with that Barry Goldwater.”

— Howard Dean

7. “Look, I’m not a perfect person. I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble. I wear suits that are cheap. But I say what I think and I believe what I say, and I’m willing to say things that are not popular but ordinary people know are right.”

— Howard Dean

8. “We will ultimately be judged by how we react in times of trouble and how we care for the least among us.”

— Howard Dean

9. “Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings.”

— Howard Dean

10. “If you’re really worried about the effect of “Silent Night” on the kids, you need a hobby or something, and I’m glad you’re pointing that out.”

— Howard Dean

11. “I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can’t play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it’s called.”

— Howard Dean

12. “I don’t hate Republicans as individuals. But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do.”

— Howard Dean

13. “I’m just deeply disappointed that once again we may have to settle for the lesser of two evils.”

— Howard Dean

14. “People have said I’m the candidate of anger. Well, we have a right to be angry. We lost 3 million jobs. We lost our place as the moral leader of the world.”

— Howard Dean

15. “My view of Christianity is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind. So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions.”

— Howard Dean

16. “The way to balance the budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut almost everything else. It would be tough but we could do it.”

— Howard Dean

17. “What I usually do is tell funny stories from the road, many of which are, of course, unprintable. But I don’t actually have a joke. I don’t tell jokes much. I tell little stories.”

— Howard Dean

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18. “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.”

— Howard Dean

19. “The status quo helps liberals. We’re going to change the country.”

— Howard Dean

20. “From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.”

— Howard Dean

21. “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

— Howard Dean

22. “What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President’s unilateral intervention in Iraq?”

— Howard Dean

23. “The truth is the President of the United States used the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia. When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is extraordinarily damaging to the country.”

— Howard Dean

24. “I’m not against the Hanukkah songs. I like Hanukkah songs. I grew up with Hanukkah songs. I’m not opposed to Hanukkah or the songs that accompany it, at all.”

— Howard Dean

25. “I don’t mind being called a liberal. I just don’t really think it’s true.”

— Howard Dean

26. “I’ve resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.”

— Howard Dean

27. “If money is a form of speech, as the Supreme Court has regrettably found, rich donors will always be the loudest speakers.”

— Howard Dean

28. “I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.”

— Howard Dean

29. “The real truth is, there’s no such thing as a red state or a blue state, they’re all purple. Some are more purple than others and our job is to get them all deep purple and then blue. And we can do that.”

— Howard Dean

30. “I’m tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing. We’re fighting for freedom in Iraq. We’re going to fight for freedom in America.”

— Howard Dean

31. “The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.”

— Howard Dean

32. “I may be controversial, but my allegiance is to people outside the Beltway.”

— Howard Dean

33. “I’m a committed Christian. I worship in my own way. That’s my business. That’s not the business of the pharisees who are going to preach to me about what I do and then do something else.”

— Howard Dean

34. “Every day it becomes clearer that this was the wrong war at the wrong time.”

— Howard Dean

35. “The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite. We don’t need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion dollars bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah.”

— Howard Dean

36. “I think we had quite enough capitalism in the last eight years; I think we need some regulation now.”

— Howard Dean

37. “You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”

— Howard Dean

38. “There are definitely some people who cheat, but how come we’re only focusing on people who are on welfare who cheat, and not the bank presidents who cheat?”

— Howard Dean

39. “I have a great sense of humor, but it has an ironic twist to it.”

— Howard Dean

40. “Real Democrats don’t make promises they can’t keep.”

— Howard Dean

41. “We won when we toppled Saddam. That was the only clear goal of this war, to topple the Iraqi government. It took about 10 minutes.”

— Howard Dean

42. “I actually spoke in an African-American church yesterday.”

— Howard Dean

43. “I’m not attacking liberals with a broad brush.”

— Howard Dean

44. “There’s been more than one time when I’ve said something, and sort of the middle of what I’ve said is not said but thought, and therefore assumed to be understood, which is a ridiculous assumption on my part, but sometimes gets me in trouble.”

— Howard Dean

45. “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

— Howard Dean

46. “The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we’re never going to have a consistent policy.”

— Howard Dean

47. “And people in America are very practical people across the political spectrum. Very conservative women want their kids, their daughters taking birth control.”

— Howard Dean

48. “The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong.”

— Howard Dean

49. “America is a conservative country with a small “c” – they want change, but they don’t want too much change too fast.”

— Howard Dean

50. “The capture of Saddam has not made America safer.”

— Howard Dean