Top 40 James Carville Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.”

— James Carville

2. “There’s a simple doctrine. Outside of a person’s love the most sacred thing they can give is their labor. Labor is a very precious thing you have and any time you can combined labor and love you’ve really made a match.”

— James Carville

3. “Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason.”

— James Carville

4. “Never underestimate people.”

— James Carville

5. “If you say three things, you don’t say anything.”

— James Carville

6. “Don’t get mad. Don’t get even. Just get elected, then get even.”

— James Carville

7. “Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it’s easier to get away with murder.”

— James Carville

8. “The only politician in America I know with a man-date is Jim McGreevey.”

— James Carville

9. “I think the Democratic Party has the chronic problem of appearing to be weak, of not standing and fighting for what it believes in, not fighting for its own.”

— James Carville

10. “All the wrong people are against it, so it must be right.”

— James Carville

11. “I think that America will not trust a party to defend America that isn’t willing to defend itself.”

— James Carville

12. “The teachings of the Church line up more with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.”

— James Carville

13. “The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was because there were more Democrats that didn’t have a clue than there were Republicans.”

— James Carville

14. “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

— James Carville

15. “Truth is relative. Truth is what you can make the voter believe is the truth. If you’re smart enough, truth is what you make the voter think it is. That’s why I’m a Democrat. I can make the Democratic voters think whatever I want them to.”

— James Carville

16. “Winning an argument with your wife is like winning the war with Iraq. Once you win, you’re in even more trouble.”

— James Carville

17. “Drag a $100 bill through a trailer camp and there’s no telling what you will find.”

— James Carville

18. “You don’t need a guidebook to see New Orleans – just a good pair of shoes.”

— James Carville

19. “This is not class warfare, this is generational warfare. This administration and old wealthy people have declared war on young people. That is the real war that is going on here. And that is the war we’ve got to talk about.”

— James Carville

20. “When you become famous, being famous becomes your profession.”

— James Carville

21. “I didn’t just experiment with marijuana – if you know what I mean.”

— James Carville

22. “These are the people who don’t believe in evolution or global warming. So, why would they believe default would hurt anything?”

— James Carville

23. “If you didn’t have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you?”

— James Carville

24. “I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn’t have to get one.”

— James Carville

25. “If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he’d have two.”

— James Carville

26. “Ideologies aren’t all that important. What’s important is psychology.”

— James Carville

27. “If you want to be angry at Gore, be angry at him for not fighting harder in Florida.”

— James Carville

28. “As with mosquitoes, horseflies, and most bloodsucking parasites, Kenneth Starr was spawned in stagnant water.”

— James Carville

29. “What does he stand for?”

— James Carville

30. “The country feels like it’s entitled to abuse this state and forget about us, and we are sick of it.”

— James Carville

31. “You have to have sharp elbows if you want to change something.”

— James Carville

32. “What I’m suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do.”

— James Carville

33. “The only thing I’m running for is the state line.”

— James Carville

34. “I think Ralph Nader is the biggest liar in American politics when he said it didn’t matter who was president.”

— James Carville

35. “But I’d rather not predict. I’d rather affect.”

— James Carville

36. “They seem to be getting it together. How much damage will the picture of people spending four or five days on rooftops do That depends on how well it goes from here on out.”

— James Carville

37. “Washington is a dirty diaper. It’s time for a change.”

— James Carville

38. “You know there’s nothing a Hill Democrat would rather do than criticize another Democrat. It is their favorite activity. Then they can read about how honorable they are in an Op-Ed piece, how bipartisan.”

— James Carville

39. “It’s hard to think that you’re a political consultant – not many people are going to get a crack at a thing like this.”

— James Carville

40. “Sometimes a mind is like a mouth: you just got to shut it.”

— James Carville

41. “I once said hello to Catch22 of Newsvine; he seemed like an opinionated guy.”

— James Carville

42. “We should not run away from religious teachings. We should run to them.”

— James Carville

43. “No one will ever accuse James Carville of taking himself seriously.”

— James Carville

44. “I’ve never seen a candidate – I’ve never seen a human being – who, with the most limited briefing, can understand the dimensions, the parameters, the nuances of everything of any kind of a policy or political problem.”

— James Carville

45. “Republicans now have their own network in Fox, so guys who don’t like to answer questions, like Trent Lott, have a place to go to hit softballs.”

— James Carville