Top 50 Mark Shields Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.”

— Mark Shields

2. “There is always strength in numbers.”

— Mark Shields

3. “The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.”

— Mark Shields

4. “Human trafficking is a human tragedy. It’s an outrage against any decent people.”

— Mark Shields

5. “He who speaks the truth must keep one foot in the stirrup.”

— Mark Shields

6. “The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame, and it should be a national embarrassment.”

— Mark Shields

7. “You really have one bite at the apple.”

— Mark Shields

8. “Health care, it’s going to be political. It’s going to be, let’s say, the confluence of the politics and the messy implementation.”

— Mark Shields

9. “John Kerry’s biography was central to his campaign.”

— Mark Shields

10. “Let’s not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.”

— Mark Shields

11. “There’s no question that there’s been a breach in the trust between urban – especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.”

— Mark Shields

12. “The way to solve all the money in politics is not to pretend we can get money out of politics. That will never happen. We have to channel it in ways where we can see it and hold it accountable. And I think the parties are the best vehicle for that.”

— Mark Shields

13. “Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.”

— Mark Shields

14. “I think Guantanamo, has been synonymous with the staining of American values and American legal tradition.”

— Mark Shields

15. “The Democrats are standing on one side, and the Republicans are playing games on the other. Both sides are playing games.”

— Mark Shields

16. “George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.”

— Mark Shields

17. “Sometimes, you just let the country have its way, and you don’t try to determine the shape of the country. You sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes.”

— Mark Shields

18. “In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation’s history.”

— Mark Shields

19. “The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.”

— Mark Shields

20. “The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can’t outsource your work; you can’t move your emergency department to Pakistan.”

— Mark Shields

21. “I’m a little nervous about public funding. It’s better than what we got now.”

— Mark Shields

22. “From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it.”

— Mark Shields

23. “Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.”

— Mark Shields

24. “George W. Bush in 2000 went to private financing for the nomination, but he accepted public funding in the general. And, quite frankly, so did – it was broken in 2008, when Barack Obama decided he wasn’t going to do that.”

— Mark Shields

25. “As long as Republicans won’t – won’t raise taxes and as long as Democrats won’t in any way make entitlements based on need, rather than just across the board, I really think that we’re doomed to this deadlock.”

— Mark Shields

26. “When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.”

— Mark Shields

27. “The studies that show the reason Washington real estate is booming and there are so many lobbyists in town, it does pay.”

— Mark Shields

28. “The Republicans, they are in the danger of rooting for the country to fail. They look bad that way, I mean, and I want to say to them, cheer up, Republicans. Eventually, things will get worse.”

— Mark Shields

29. “There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.”

— Mark Shields

30. “We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests.”

— Mark Shields

31. “If I were John Bolton, I’d take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.”

— Mark Shields

32. “I am struck the whole litany of people, especially of that era, who were involved in some scandal or another. Some of it was sexual. Some of it was more financial. And it was just all concentrated in a lot of people all at once.”

— Mark Shields

33. “Washington is a city of money. It’s a flood of money.”

— Mark Shields

34. “As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.”

— Mark Shields

35. “John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.”

— Mark Shields

36. “Everybody who served in John Kerry’s boat under his command, save one, has stood with him.”

— Mark Shields

37. “At a time when the public is sour on politicians, have no use for them, Bill Clinton has risen to a different level. Bill Clinton is endlessly interesting.”

— Mark Shields

38. “Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.”

— Mark Shields

39. “When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.”

— Mark Shields

40. “They’re still a subject beholden to special interests, but at least they have a national constituency. At least they have to think about national majorities.”

— Mark Shields

41. “Politics, they all – talked to the insiders.”

— Mark Shields

42. “John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.”

— Mark Shields

43. “Every measurement of where you have more public confidence in creating jobs, American prosperity, controlling crime, health care, providing education, all of these standards, Bill Clinton has considerably high marks. The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack.”

— Mark Shields

44. “Benjamin Netanyahu is no Winston Churchill. Whatever else he, is he’s not a Winston Churchill. He basically violated the great rule, which is it’s better to mislead the people and to lose an election than to mislead the people and win an election.”

— Mark Shields

45. “If an abduction is reported, it is dealt with in the same way as a kidnap.”

— Mark Shields

46. “The Sheldon Adelsons, the Koch brothers, the George Soroses, what we want to try to do is force them into the parties, not so that Kasich or whoever is going to straight to them and trying to kiss up to special interests, but so the parties have the power and they can direct the money.”

— Mark Shields

47. “Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That’s the reality, not George Bush’s revisionist history!”

— Mark Shields

48. “I have my disagreements with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He’s chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.”

— Mark Shields

49. “There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling.”

— Mark Shields

50. “The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect.”

— Mark Shields