Quotes

[During the 2020 Democrat debate at Texas Southern University in Houston]The bottom line is this: Donald Trump in office on trade policy, you know he reminds me of that guy in the Wizard of Oz when you pull back the curtain it's a really small dude?

Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that's wrong, and it goes against everything that we stand for.

[on gun control] And we'll deal with what we need to deal with in terms of also, as we move forward, all agreeing that we've got to be smarter as a country in terms of who has access to what and, in particular, assault weapons. And we got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are - because you have been forced to have to take it seriously.

The Governor and I and we were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right? The significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs. And there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children and what that means to the future of our nation, depending on whether or not they have the resources they need to achieve their God-given talent.

[on COVID-19] It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day, it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.

You know, when we talk about our children - I know for this group, we all believe that when we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community.

[on President Donald Trump] We have a predator living in the White House.

You need to get to go, and you to be able to get where you need to go, to do the work, and get home.

[on trans people] I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period, and should not be vilified for who they are, and should not be bullied for who they are.

We now know because of great investigative journalism, that Donald Trump paid seven hundred and fifty dollars in taxes. When I first heard about it, I literally said "You mean seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?" And it was like "No, seven hundred and fifty dollars."

[on Transgender Day of Visibility] Every person in our nation must have the freedom to be their true self and to live free from hate. On Transgender Day of Visibility, I say to all trans and non-binary people: We see you. We love you. We will never stop fighting for you.

I went home one day and I said, 'Why are conservatives bad, Mommy?' because I thought we were supposed to conserve! Ha ha ha! I couldn't reconcile it. Now I can! Ha ha ha!

My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, 'I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'

[on culture] I think culture is, it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment. And we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment that is a reflection of joy, because every, you know, it comes in the morning.

When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.

The importance of community banks is they are, as they are called, they're in the community.

[on the NCAA women's tournament] Do you know that the women's teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022?

[on Ruth Bader Ginsburg] Was part of our culture. Yes, we wear those Notorious B.I.G. T-shirts with a lot of pride, but since she passed, there are parents reminding their children that she helped their lives.

It is status-quo thinking to believe that putting more police on the streets creates more safety. That's wrong. It's just wrong.

We have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you're the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke.

I have a long-standing commitment to fighting for the rights of transgender people, for the dignity of transgender people. I have a long-standing awareness based on my experience in the community of knowing the lives that people are living every day, that are burdened with fear, that are burdened with unequal access to everything from employment to a response from law enforcement to access to health care to access to housing.

[on climate change] I have always believed, and I've worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.

[on crime] You know, if you just look at where the stars are in the sky, don't look at 'em as just random things. If you just look at 'em as points, look at the constellation - what does it show you?

[on LGBTQIA+] Everyone should have the freedom to love who they love openly and with pride.

[on victims of the California wildfire] It's critically important that, to the extent you can find anything that gives you an ability to be patient in this extremely dangerous and unprecedented crisis, that you do.

When young children see someone who looks like them running for office, they see themselves and what they can be, unburdened by what has been.

[on the 2024 election campaign] If I hesitated or backtracked mid-sentence to try to clarify or better express a thought, it was "word salad". Meanwhile, Trump could describe Hurricane Florence as "one of the wettest we've ever seen, from the standpoint of water".