James Carville Quotes

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James Carville

Profession : Lawyer

Birth : October 25, 1944

I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn't have to get one.

James Carville

We should not run away from religious teachings. We should run to them.

James Carville

I made the argument that every growing demographic in this country - nonwhite voters, younger people - is trending Democratic. It's a ticking time bomb for the GOP. That's why I felt safe in saying that 'Republicans have no hope of making serious inroads into Democratic advantages in 2010 or likely 2012 or 2014 and so on.'

James Carville

Drag a $100 bill through a trailer camp and there's no telling what you will find.

James Carville

The only person that ever stumbles is a guy moving forward. You don't stumble backwards; you stumble forward, and you never stumble when you're stationary. So don't worry about stumbling. Keep pushing it forward.

James Carville

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason.

James Carville

Ideologies aren't all that important. What's important is psychology.

James Carville

When I was sixteen, I borrowed a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from the mobile library. Democrats and Republicans were standing for very different principles, and I could see which side was going to represent me.

James Carville

Punditry is like weather forecasting: the winds can shift without warning. I remember when nobody would bet a McDonald's Quarter Pounder that Bill Clinton would win the White House.

James Carville

When you run for president, and become president, they just rip you apart. Every facade of privacy that you have is gone. I think everybody believes that, to some extent, you can maintain privacy. And I think in the end, everybody gets proven wrong.

James Carville

Most of the stuff I've ever said is pretty insignificant and, by and large, has been said off the cuff and without much thought to the potential consequences.

James Carville

I grew up in a French-dominated Catholic part of the country. I was an altar boy. I went to Catholic school. I have a cousin who is a priest - it's part of my DNA. It's kind of hard to separate me from the church, to try to say where one starts and the other stops.

James Carville

You have to have sharp elbows if you want to change something.

James Carville

Like a lot of people, I pray for a sick relative or that kind of thing, but I don't pray to make my next flight connection at the airport. I find prayers before sports contests to be insensitive and kind of demeaning, at least when someone prays to beat the other team or something like that.

James Carville

When you dehumanize a group, there's lasting consequences because they know that they're being dehumanized.

James Carville

I knew that manual labor wasn't the career for me.

James Carville

My high school job was putting insulation in attics - in Louisiana in the summer. It must have been 95 degrees every day, and the insulation used to get all over me. It was not fun. But I didn't know any different. It wasn't like I was spending summers on Cape Cod.

James Carville

I have people ask me if I'm going to convince my daughters to be Democrats, and I say, 'I have yet to convince my daughters to close a door.' I don't how in the world I would ever convince them to be in a political affiliation.

James Carville

Politics is a messy business, but campaigning prepares you for governing. It prepares you to get hit, stand strong, and, if necessary, hit back.

James Carville

Every day Catholics prove that you can be a good Catholic and a good Democrat and have a different position from the Church on abortion.

James Carville