Top 40 Rahm Emanuel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We have come a long way and we have a little further to go.”

— Rahm Emanuel

2. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

— Rahm Emanuel

3. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

— Rahm Emanuel

4. “We’re bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.”

— Rahm Emanuel

5. “I think that every country presents its own particular challenges, different cultures, different histories, different religions, different people. And different ethnic make-ups in those countries present different challenges.”

— Rahm Emanuel

6. “Republicans are ‘bad people who deserve a two-by-four upside their heads.’”

— Rahm Emanuel

7. “Nearly losing my life made me want to live my life.”

— Rahm Emanuel

8. “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”

— Rahm Emanuel

9. “As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that’s how we get judged by our colleagues and that’s how we get judged by the good lord.”

— Rahm Emanuel

10. “I’ve never been in a place where winning has hurt the ability to do anything.”

— Rahm Emanuel

11. “There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.”

— Rahm Emanuel

12. “I don’t want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn’t pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.”

— Rahm Emanuel

13. “When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.”

— Rahm Emanuel

14. “I saw the president make the tough calls in the Situation Room – and today, our troops in Iraq have finally come home so America can do some nation building here at home. That was the change that we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.”

— Rahm Emanuel

15. “Banks are slowly but surely lending again, and never again will taxpayers foot the bill for Wall Street’s excesses. In case we forgot, that was the change we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.”

— Rahm Emanuel

16. “Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There’s a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn’t exist.”

— Rahm Emanuel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

17. “President Obama made the right choice, over one million Americans are still working today. The American auto industry is not just surviving. It is thriving. Where Mitt Romney was willing to turn his back on Akron, Dayton and Toledo, Ohio, the president said, ‘I’ve got your back.’”

— Rahm Emanuel

18. “Because of the president’s leadership, every American will have access to affordable, quality health care.”

— Rahm Emanuel

19. “We invoke the sacrifices of our fallen heroes in the abstract, but we seldom take time to thank them individually.”

— Rahm Emanuel

20. “Deliberation is a good thing when it comes to fighting wars.”

— Rahm Emanuel

21. “Our troops are the best in the world. I have absolute confidence in the ability of the troops who are here, or additional troops, to do their part.”

— Rahm Emanuel

22. “The problem is, you have to look at Afghanistan also in a global context where we’ve canceled basically our missile defense system undercutting the Czech Republic in Poland. We’ve I think not dealt with Iran with the kind of resolve that would show that we understand the nature of that threat.”

— Rahm Emanuel

23. “The fact is, Bush’s war policy has failed. It’s failed! Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?”

— Rahm Emanuel

24. “I believe the record I was allowed to help establish by the side of the president was important.”

— Rahm Emanuel

25. “Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?”

— Rahm Emanuel

26. “I wake up some mornings hating me too.”

— Rahm Emanuel

27. “Everybody knows they’re on the Obama team: There isn’t vice presidential vs. presidential division, there’s not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history.”

— Rahm Emanuel

28. “A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush’s shovel.”

— Rahm Emanuel

Featured in: Strong Quotes

29. “I think the most important thing for us to make judgments about is what can we really do? What can we achieve?”

— Rahm Emanuel

30. “I think indeed our response on counterinsurgency needs to be finely tuned to the needs of Afghanistan. This is not Iraq. We don’t have a Sons of Iraq here. We don’t have the same divisions here that we had between Sunni and Shia.”

— Rahm Emanuel

31. “In the White House, you can be on the pitcher’s mound or you can be in the catcher’s position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.”

— Rahm Emanuel

32. “And it’s time as a country that we have an assault weapon ban.”

— Rahm Emanuel

33. “While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.”

— Rahm Emanuel

34. “We’re proud of the work we’re doing to make Chicago a great city for people of all ages. Nothing’s more important than keeping in mind the needs of older adults – and how valuable a role they play in improving the city, based on their amazing collective talent and wisdom.”

— Rahm Emanuel

35. “I should say the leadership’s proposal in the Senate and the House are very unpopular. And when people realize it will raise taxes, raise their insurance premiums cost and explode the deficit, they think twice about it.”

— Rahm Emanuel

36. “We need to deal with the problem of al Qaeda, make sure that they can’t have a sanctuary in Afghanistan and guarantee that we have regional stabilization and particularly focused on Pakistan.”

— Rahm Emanuel

37. “There’s no safe Republican district. You can run, but you cannot hide.”

— Rahm Emanuel

38. “Things happened there that I don’t think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.”

— Rahm Emanuel

39. “I would like to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago. That has always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives.”

— Rahm Emanuel

40. “There has to be a reform within the government that is tangible, that we can actually measure and that we have confidence is going to provide some of the differences that I think are essential to our troops to be able to carry out their mission and to the longer- term interests of our country.”

— Rahm Emanuel

41. “The person who takes the oath of office in the next four months will shape not just the next four years, but the next forty years of our nation. In these next four years, we need proven leadership, proven judgment and proven values. America needs four more years of President Barack Obama.”

— Rahm Emanuel

42. “I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself, without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency, will work.”

— Rahm Emanuel

43. “I still believe the Lewinsky investigation was way off from the focus of what Whitewater was, which turned out to be nothing at the end of the process. And I think that there were people who were determined as political opponents to not allow his presidency to succeed.”

— Rahm Emanuel