Top 40 James Carville Quotes (2025 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. “Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it’s easier to get away with murder.”

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

7. “Never underestimate people.”

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

11. “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

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

14. “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

15. “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

16. “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

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

— James Carville

18. “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

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

21. “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

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

33. “What does he stand for?”

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

35. “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

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

38. “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

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

— James Carville

40. “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

41. “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

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

— James Carville

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

— James Carville

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

— 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