Matt Taibbi Quotes - BrainyQuote

American - Author Born: March 2, 1970

This idea that you can't be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don't stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It's possible to do this job with honor and dignity.

Man You People Job

The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

You Responsibility Joy Thought

In other countries they have histories with revolutions and class movements. In America, people don't like to think of themselves like being in a lower class. They all like to think of themselves as potential millionaires.

People Think America Like

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.

Bubble Like Big About

In the old days, when you took out a mortgage, it was probably through a local bank or a credit union, and whoever gave you your loan held on to it for life. If you lost your job or got too sick to work and suddenly had trouble making your payments, you could call a human being and work things out.

Life Work You Sick

The threat posed by Bank of America isn't just financial - it's a full-blown assault on the American dream. Where's the incentive to play fair and do well, when what we see rewarded at the highest levels of society is failure, stupidity, incompetence and meanness? If this is what winning in our system looks like, who doesn't want to be a loser?

Failure Society Stupidity Winning

There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.

Power Crime Reason Teach

Creating legislation is a tough process. But watering down legislation? Strangling it with lawsuits and comment letters and blue-ribbon committees? Not so tough, it turns out.

Down Tough Process Letters

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.

Time Business Money Situation

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will 'take our country back' from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change.

Change Tea Victory Political

Top 10
Matt Taibbi
Quotes

Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you'll buy products that they're advertising.

You News Media Advertising

It's not a stretch to say the whole financial industry revolves around the compass point of the absolutely safe AAA rating. But the financial crisis happened because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into something that could be paid for.

Say Something Being Financial

The national debt is totally unlike a family budget for about a gazillion reasons, not the least of which being that families cannot raise money by fiat or deflate the size of their debt unilaterally and that family members die instead of existing infinitely.

Family Money Die Being

What we Americans go through to pick a president is not only crazy and unnecessary but genuinely abusive. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in a craven, cynical effort to stir up hatred and anger on both sides.

Anger Crazy Effort Go

What makes us feel pessimistic about the world, ultimately, is the way the media encourage us to believe that our fate hangs on the every move of the promise-breaking, terminally disappointing Teflon liars in Washington.

World Believe Feel Way

Over the years, many in the public have become numb to news of financial corruption, partly because too many of these stories involve banker-on-banker crime.

Corruption News Crime Become

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time.

Time Name End Fraud

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that's counter to their own interests.

Tea People Way Problem

We love wealth, and we hate poor people. I know people who work in TV news who have actually been told to do stand-ups rather than put interviews with poor people on the air. We physically don't want to look at them.

Work Love People Hate

In the '50s and '60s, journalism wasn't a profession. It wasn't something you went to college for - it was really more of a trade. You had a lot of guys who came up working in newspapers at the copy desk, or delivery boys, and then they would somehow become reporters afterward and learn on the job.

You Job Journalism College

You know, I used to live in Russia where you had officers in the military opening up the warehouses at night and taking weapons out and putting them into a truck and selling them to foreign powers. That type of stuff doesn't happen in the United States. We still have a very functioning and relatively civil society.

You Night Society Live

Candidates don't want to be associated with poor people, people who have jobs or are ugly; they want to be associated with a certain middle class demographic, so as a result they leave those others out completely.

People Ugly Result Poor

Everything in America is so uniform. In Russia, everywhere you go is completely insane.

You Uniform Go America

I think that if you're a thinking person you should always be trying to learn something new.

You Thinking Think New

I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system.

Product System Arts Liberal

I mean, people who say that the Tea Party isn't a grassroots movement, I think, are incorrect. I think in some respects, it is a grassroots movement.

Tea People Think Party

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