Civility in Politics Quotes

The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks.

It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.

I think the political process has degenerated into name-calling and extremism, and I think that that's unfortunate.

Too much screaming in Congress. Too much screaming everywhere.

If the Trump White House and their allies in the media want to have this conversation about decency, I welcome them to the table to talk about it. But there's a bunch of stuff that they need to get caught up on before we get to a comedian at the White House dinner.

When I first came to the Senate, people in both parties went out of their way to have personal relationships.

I dislike Ted Cruz as much as the next everyone. But that's no reason to be rude to Ted's loving wife and possible hostage.

Negative personal attacks have no place in public life and serve to erode public confidence in our basic institutions of government.

I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game. But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people use words that they shouldn't be using.

Gratitude is not an active sentiment in politics.

I will always remember and we must all remember that Democrats are our political rivals, not our enemies, and they deserve our respect.

There has to be some decorum left in politics and in American journalism as well. Our husbands are the candidates.

The language has changed. When I grew up and watched the campaigns of John Kennedy, even with Richard Nixon, there was a lot higher level of civility. Now we describe a disagreement as an attack.

My hope is that we would begin to have a dialogue in this country about the importance of civility. We can have strong differences, but it does seem to me that most of the country believes it's gone to critical mass in what I would call the professional class across the political spectrum - left and right.

Unfortunately there are too many examples of members of Congress and other elected officials using language, referring to your opponents in ways that you would have never done before, ascribing the worst motives to your opponents, and assuming that other Americans are the enemies. And that's just not the way it used to be. And I don't think it can be that way in the future.

… a very lively but ill-mannered democracy

A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent's nose - even in the matter of political rhetoric.

Let me start by saying that I do not enjoy nor relish the partisan role of attack dog. I never found any fun in that. I don't think it's constructive. I don't intend to become that here in the Senate.

Instead of channeling Trump, and attacking the courts in ways that are as bad as or worse than the president's, public officials who ought to know better should behave better.

The public is increasingly disgusted with a steady diet of defamation, and prepared to reward those who refrain from it.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Donald Trump's election was a watershed moment. Even those like me, who had previously pulled levers for candidates of both parties, felt that Mr. Trump had not only violated all sense of common decency, but, alarmingly, that he seemed to have no idea that there even existed such an unspoken code of civility and dignity.

Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that's uncivil.

Bipartisanship and decency are thrown to the waste side because people want their party to win so badly.

When you don't have accountability, there's no limit to the things that people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the filth that so often is part of the American political debate is that candidates have to stand by their ads.