If you're working on better conditions for prisoners, if you make that a popular issue and you invite mainstream media to weigh in on that subject, you're going to end up with a much more regressive public-policy environment than if you approach it in a quieter way. It's not because the public is stupid, it's just that people with only a cursory interest in something are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. That's impossible to explain in a cable-news media... it doesn't make sense.

Rachel Maddow

If you're someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that's a sign of a life lived honorably.

Rachel Maddow

moments inspiring people

Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.

Rachel Maddow

has-beens imagination

Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.

Rachel Maddow

supposed-to-be rights

We got the first WikiLeaks publication of documents hacked and stolen by Russian government sources from the DNC, from the Democratic Party, and they started publishing those stolen documents from the DNC right before the Democrats started their convention.Good political timing if you`re trying to help [Donald] Trump and hurt the Democrats.

Rachel Maddow

party government hurt

I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.

Rachel Maddow

party agreement mean

Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.

Rachel Maddow

different goal math

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

Rachel Maddow

gay guy people

When people get to speak about themselves and the things that matter to them, on their own terms, we see them as who they are. They can't be reduced to objects of derision.

Rachel Maddow

speak matter people

Humans are ambitious and rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best, not our worst.

Rachel Maddow

respect leadership inspirational

Fascism is not just a word. It`s not just a way to insult someone with whom you disagree. It is a specific thing. It is a specific form of far right politics that involves a sort of narcissistic cult of superman action around the leader of the party.

Rachel Maddow

narcissistic party leader

If you took a cracked pot and you cracked that cracked pot, you'd be approaching the level of cracked pottery we are talking about here.

Rachel Maddow

pottery levels talking

Hopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about.

Rachel Maddow

graduation inspirational thinking

I don't have any option. I'm not going to be less gay or more pretty. I can't try to have less personality or fewer controversial opinions.

Rachel Maddow

gay personality trying

Don't focus on what I'm wearing. Focus on what's coming out of my face.

Rachel Maddow

focus

Bernie Sanders are the only person who talks about the kinds of things that might be driving people to support Donald Trump in such large numbers in the Republican Party.

Rachel Maddow

party numbers people

I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me.

Rachel Maddow

trying believe world

Americans are incredibly religious as a nation, and we have gotten that way by having the government stay out of religion and say religion is a private matter. The government doesn't take sides. Public schools don't promote or denigrate any religion.

Rachel Maddow

government religious school

Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if — as the war ends, or at least starts to end — if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there — Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?

Rachel Maddow

mistake memories war

After we graduate tonight, we no longer have to let society happen to us. We get to create our own.

Rachel Maddow

graduates tonight graduation

Russian government was in contact with multiple [Donald] Trump campaign sources while they were doing [attacks]. Russian nemesis in the American government, U.S. State Department, CIA, are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power.

Rachel Maddow

campaigns government states