Success is about persistence. You can only afford to be persistent in something you deeply enjoy.

You can turn on Fox News almost any day and see some fictional story about voter fraud, the whole purpose of which is to limit voting by the poor, the elderly, college students and minorities.

I made $70,000 in the 1990s, when I was a corporate lawyer. I didn't see that salary again until I was on MSNBC.

The Republicans love alpha-males, and they're sick of the corruption, too. Not that Trump will do anything about it. But at least he's not bought. And he throws in just the right amount of racism to appeal to the Republican base.

Unfortunately, a lot of the mainstream media television is so fake, so plastic, that it's really turned off the younger generation.

Our number one agenda is to get money out of politics, to drain the swamp, but not in the way that Trump said. He stacked his cabinet full of Goldman Sachs guys.

If I get hungry, I get cranky on air.

I think President Obama is clearly, you know, a Republican. I know, because in the 1990s I was a Republican, and he's way to the right of me, and I've hardly changed any positions.

I am not in the camp of 'Russia has to be our enemy, and they have to be that way forever,' and I think sometimes we fight about from the past.

You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don't think so. It doesn't look that way at all. And of course, when you get to Fox News, they're a whole different animal: they're purely propaganda.

The Grand Bargain is a Grand Lie. Anyone who argues for it is either a fool or a charlatan. If President Obama was anything but the establishment hack that he is, he would never consider it.

I'm a huge optimist.

I've criticized myself over the years.

You know you're a bigot when you can't take out the word 'Muslim' from a sentence you stated and replace it with 'Jew' and still have it be socially acceptable.

The devil I know is the establishment, and I'm gonna beat that devil.

I know that a lot of people love to say that polls are wrong or don't matter, and from time to time they are - it depends on who they are polling.

The reason people like the Young Turks is because we say things you're not allowed to say in Washington that are obviously true.

The right wing has an ecosystem that is funded by billionaires who want tax cuts.

There are a lot of things wrong with the country, and that doesn't mean America sucks. It means we should improve it.

Jeremy Corbin is a little too liberal for me.

You can't win a congressional seat unless you have money. Even if you do, it's tick-tock, tick-tock until someone with more money beats you.

I was always kind of a loudmouth to the point where I annoyed my teachers and friends.

Be true to your audience, or you will lose money.

If I'm off the teleprompter, management doesn't get to see what I'm going to say.

I'm interested in producing more TV shows.

I had one of the best nights of my life at Mardi Gras.

I hire a lot of hosts, reporters, producers, and I hire people who care about the news.

TV is a wasteland. It's a bunch of news actors that read off a prompter.

The right-wing wants to destroy all the media and replace it with their propaganda.

I didn't just graduate from Stanford with a really good idea and a good dad.

I love doing talk shows.

I'm an early, middle, and late supporter of Bernie Sanders.

I was a liberal Republican growing up in New Jersey. That doesn't exist anymore. If you're a Republican, you have to think that tax cuts for the rich are awesome, torture is awesome, moral war is awesome.

Do you see Fox News go after Republican officials all the time? No, you almost never see that. You see them do that to Trump administration officials almost never.

When you lose power, then all of a sudden, the press are lions. When you have power, the press are lambs.

I was at a White House Correspondents' Dinner, and I met Bobby Jindal, and we had a perfectly lovely twenty minute conversation.

There is no greater threat to Washington, D.C., than Bernie Sanders, and they know it.

The establishment thinks we're the bad guys, and we're the radicals, but what they don't realize is we're actually the last line of defense. After us, it's the pitchforks.

When I was at MSNBC, I had issues with the Obama administration. I got told by the person who runs MSNBC... that Washington was not happy with my tone.

It is fascinating. No matter where I go, people recognize me.

I find the Democratic party overall, on a macro level, to be institutionally corrupt.

Liberty is the most important thing.

How could anyone ever build a company if they didn't have investments? It doesn't make any sense.

I think 'progressive' is different than 'liberal' - I know a lot of people use them interchangeably - but I think I'm far more progressive than I am liberal.

I think a progressive is someone who cares to expand freedom for everybody.

Cable news, by its very nature, by its formula, is very guest-heavy.

If I'm working on the Internet, you know, it's different than working on television.

I think Rachel Maddow has done a brilliant job in becoming more and more independent. And I think she does a fantastic progressive show, and she did it by accruing power, by getting better and better ratings.

I've defended the Clintons longer than I've been a liberal, but I don't have any nostalgia for that.

Trump is a maniac.