LAWRENCE O'DONNELL

Publicly, defense lawyers cling to the text book theory that the defendant has no burden of proof and that no negative inference should ever be taken when a defendant doesn't defend himself on the witness stand.

I don't for one second spend any time thinking about carefully ingratiating myself with someone for the future.

In pre-election polling, momentum is more important than position, and in primary polling, national numbers are useless.

I don't think Republicans are evil. I think they mostly have a different philosophy of government than I do.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

I always knew I'd be leaving government someday. I just didn't know when. There was something about knowing that it was temporary that left me in writerly observational mode.

You don't immediately adopt the values and the framework of this, the academically successful world, just because okay now you kids get to go to high school.

I'm a very slow writer.

There's something about the power of influential correspondents tweeting something that has become the fastest way to get a story moving. It will turn into something much faster and much bigger than it would have.

Where I come from, no one settled their disagreements with bets, because no one of us had any money to bet.

People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been very busy educating America about just how much socialism we have, from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public universities, and how much we love that. The truth is that there is no pure socialist or capitalist economy on earth.

I don't trust news sources, and neither should other people. They should use them in the same way that they use medical opinions and get more than one on the important issues. Trust is the most precious thing you could possibly give to another person. But to institutions? Publications?

Nixon's adroit use of television in 1952 was well ahead of its time.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room.

I can be as crazy as anybody and go over lines I should not go over.

I have no idea what I would be, I really don't have the vaguest idea what I would be, if my father had remained a Boston cop. I don't have any idea what I would have thought the horizon was.

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it.

There are plenty of odd couple Congressmen who have roomed together on Capitol Hill, but I have never heard of a chief of staff who rooms with his boss. It is beyond unusual.

There was the slow discovery for me in the early '80s that Republicans are people too... That Republicans are perfectly reasonable people... and that Republicans can be right about something.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

I went to Harvard College, grew up in Boston, and went to high school in Boston.

I discovered, to my surprise, that writing for live television made me a faster writer.

Desegregation came very painfully to the Boston schools, long after John Kelly finished high school, and the pain of desegregating Boston schools was visited entirely on the students who looked like Frederica Wilson.

The pundit world, having spent years in awe of Karl Rove, will never understand how bad he is at his White House job.