Joe Biden

If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people’s lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game.

You know you’re a success when you look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don’t subsidize, we don’t want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.

[on Trump] This guy’s shame has no limits.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

According to what you’re taught in economics courses, our system is based on free markets with entrepreneurial initiative and rational choices by informed consumers. Well, the reality is radically different.

Hitler wanted to destroy Russia- everyone needs to remember how that ended

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Grotesque as the Soviet empire was, its very existence offered a certain space for non-alignment, and for perfectly cynical reasons, it sometimes provided assistance to victims of Western attack. Those options are gone, and the South is suffering the consequences.

We have to fight. We have to fight against propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories. We have to fight isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on Earth by tearing down walls, not building them.

When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don’t eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.

Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle.

You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms… you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation.

The PR industry…have a conception of what a democracy ought to be…the specialized class are trained to do their work for the service of the masters…and the rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization because organization just causes trouble.

A very small proportion of declassified documents have anything to do with security, no matter how broadly you interpret it. They primarily have to do with ensuring that the major enemy, namely, the domestic population, does not find out what power systems are doing.

I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state – a new idea, this – even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms.

Trump does have a base, a voter base. He’s kicking them in the face with abandon. And the idea is: How do you hold onto them while you’re doing this? Not an easy trick. And this, I think, is part of the con.

What we call intellectuals, they didn’t used to call them that, it’s a modern term. Historically, what you find is overwhelmingly this group is supportive of power. There’s usually a fringe of dissidents who are treated pretty badly.

The internet provides access to an extraordinary range of information, opinion, and interpretation. But as with any source, it is useful to the extent that it is used with discrimination and insight.