Campbell Brown Quotes

Bipartisanship is really tough to achieve when everyone on both sides is left with a bad, bad taste in their mouths.

- Campbell Brown

Someone once told me I looked good in red, so I bought every piece of clothing in red and bright-red lipstick. I had huge hair, as big as I could tease it and spray it.

- Campbell Brown

Sometimes, in the midst of a tragedy like the Newton massacre, we witness incredible acts of valor, tenderness, grace, and decency. We saw it from Sandy Hook Elementary School's teachers, students, and parents, as well as from their community and country. The outpouring of sympathy and help has been touching and, at times, inspiring.

- Campbell Brown

The protests and pain over the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown had me wondering if we can ever experience the world as others do. For no matter how disputed the circumstances of both cases, many people see what happened in black and white.

- Campbell Brown

The 8 P.M. hour in the cable news world is currently driven by the indomitable Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, and Keith Olbermann. Shedding my own journalistic skin to try to inhabit the kind of persona that might coexist in that lineup is just impossible for me.

- Campbell Brown

Let's just start with the word 'diva.' It is obviously a sexist slight - a term that is only applied to women, almost always in a derogatory way. It's usually applied to women who are viewed as overly ambitious. It is applied to demanding women, to women who follow their own path.

- Campbell Brown

Education has not traditionally been a large concern in presidential elections, presumably because the president does not run schools.

- Campbell Brown

Most of Planned Parenthood's work focuses on health care for low-income women: things like screenings for breast cancer and diabetes, and family planning.

- Campbell Brown

In 'The Founders,' his new book about top charter schools, Richard Whitmire traces both the 'revolution' these schools brought about in many American cities as well as a parallel phenomenon, 'the charter pushback campaigns.'

- Campbell Brown

'Morning Joe' host Mika Brzezinski's personal life is a minefield. Her father is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and while one brother is an Obama appointee, the other advises Romney.

- Campbell Brown

What is happening with automation and globalization, that's not going away.

- Campbell Brown

I have been fortunate that publications like the 'New York Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal' have allowed me to share some of my opinions with a wider audience.

- Campbell Brown

Let's be clear about what Common Core is. It spells out what students should know at the end of each grade. The goal is to ensure that our students are sound in math and literacy and that our schools have some basic consistency nationwide. But the standards do not dictate a national curriculum, and teachers are not told how or what to teach.

- Campbell Brown

It has seemed, at times, like American carmakers think car buyers are so blindly loyal that they will keep coming back - despite the sticker shock - for crummy cars that guzzle gas, fall apart too soon, and cost too much to repair.

- Campbell Brown

My mom was very much the product of a very paternalistic, deep-southern culture, but also a repressed feminist. Her way of being defiant was to raise us to be rebellious ourselves - basically, the opposite of who she had to be in her own life.

- Campbell Brown

Trump doesn't force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him.

- Campbell Brown

I have had enough of the sexist treatment of Sarah Palin... I call upon the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment.

- Campbell Brown

Put together, what we want is a system that supports, protects, and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible in a responsible and fair way to remove teachers judged to be incompetent or abusive - that's it.

- Campbell Brown

While the protection of speech is at the bedrock of our democracy, it's critical as a nation that we exercise our right every day - and that includes embracing and engaging with those we may not agree with.

- Campbell Brown

My friends in the TV news business are in a state of despair about Donald Trump, even as their bosses in the boardroom are giddy over what he's doing for their once sagging ratings.

- Campbell Brown

I was born and raised in Louisiana - a small town called Ferriday, north of Baton Rouge.

- Campbell Brown

Gay marriage passed in New York because four Republican legislators crossed party lines. They did it in part because they had true bipartisan financial support.

- Campbell Brown

As the ratings go up, so does advertising revenue.

- Campbell Brown

I'm pretty sure the last time any anchor could honestly ignore ratings was well before I was born.

- Campbell Brown

I knew on the day that I accepted my job at CNN that a ratings victory at 8 P.M. was going to be a formidable challenge. As I have been told over and over, this is the toughest time slot in cable news.

- Campbell Brown

I'm moderating one of the presidential primary debates right after I've had a baby. I'm sitting in a dirty closet on the floor behind the auditorium where this debate is taking place between Obama, Hillary Clinton, and I'm pumping breast milk... twenty minutes before I'm going on.

- Campbell Brown

Education never quite gets the attention it deserves in presidential campaigns, but monster flip-flops surely do.

- Campbell Brown

I was not so interested in night-after-night coverage of Michael Jackson's death or Britney Spears' latest breakdown - topics that were 'breaking news' at the time.

- Campbell Brown

I don't know if a government bailout will rescue America's auto industry, but I do know that if there is a bailout, it better come with a big, bright stop sign and lots of strings attached.

- Campbell Brown

The president has been more than willing to challenge the National Rifle Association, but that is like a Republican president standing up to labor unions - not a move that risks anything with his core supporters. Mr. Obama could show some real bravery by taking on Hollywood.

- Campbell Brown

More and more parents and voters have rejected the teachers' union antiquated, top down, one-size-fits-all approach to education and continue to elect candidates who embrace reform that celebrates students and empowers parents.

- Campbell Brown

It is unimaginable that anyone, right or left, can aspire to be president without having thought about this. Every candidate has the stage; the Republicans have used it to fuss unproductively over the Common Core. The Democrats have all but refused to speak.

- Campbell Brown

This must be such a relief for the TV executives managing a business in decline, suffering from a thousand cuts from social media and other new platforms. Trump arrived on the scene as a kind of manna from hell.

- Campbell Brown

Women get scrutinized based on appearance far more than men. And look, I speak from experience here. When I wear a bad outfit on the air, I get viewer e-mail complaining about it. A lot of e-mail. Seriously.

- Campbell Brown

When Wolf Blitzer wears a not-so-great tie, how much e-mail do you think he gets? My point is, for women, unfortunately, appearance is part of the job.

- Campbell Brown

Some women are smarter than men, and some aren't. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.

- Campbell Brown

I had a moment where I left journalism, and I started getting interested in this issue and writing about it, where I felt there was a right side and a wrong side around a lot of these issues relating to education.

- Campbell Brown

The thing that bothers me about journalism is the false equivalency we sometimes place on certain issues.

- Campbell Brown

While the rest of the cable news world moved to opinion, CNN allowed me to stay true to my hard-news roots and supported me with a true commitment to old-school journalism.

- Campbell Brown

Sadly, journalism doesn't always state the obvious.

- Campbell Brown

You're never going to hear me say, 'Well, I've been critical of Obama five times, so now I need to be critical of McCain five times.' That is a false equivalence, and that's what I think is wrong with journalism.

- Campbell Brown

Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world's elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress.

- Campbell Brown

My favorite stories are about kids who refuse to give up; their homes and schools may have been destroyed; they've probably had to rely on themselves more than a lot of adults do, and they've resisted the many bad alternatives that city life offers to poor teens.

- Campbell Brown

To some people, Common Core means what it actually is, which is a set of standards. That's not necessarily most people. To other people, Common Core is a new curriculum that's been implemented at their school that they don't understand. It's applying new teaching tools.

- Campbell Brown

I've covered the White House and been yelled at by presidents.

- Campbell Brown

Parents should be allowed to choose which cable or satellite channels - sources of the most extreme content - come into their homes.

- Campbell Brown

It's understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it's always great television.

- Campbell Brown

To assume that someone's views are invariably influenced or shaped by his or her partner is lazy. It is an intellectual crutch we grope for when we do not have an effective counter to someone's argument.

- Campbell Brown

If you live in the overlapping world of politics and media, as I am learning, anything less than full transparency can potentially do you in.

- Campbell Brown

The simple fact is that not enough people want to watch my program, and I owe it to myself and to CNN to get out of the way so that CNN can try something else.

- Campbell Brown

The government sets targets for increased four-year high school graduation rates as part of its agenda for improving Americans' health.

- Campbell Brown

My cousin in Louisiana started a small company with a little savings, renovating houses. A single mom, she saved enough to buy a home and provide child care for her son. When the economy went belly up, so did her company. She was forced to sell her home and move in with her parents.

- Campbell Brown

Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved.

- Campbell Brown

Lester is the Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing can rattle him. I am not. I was always flying off the handle about things. And the one person who could calm me down and make me realize that none of this silliness mattered was Lester Holt.

- Campbell Brown

Charter opponents often try to delegitimize strong testing results like those in Boston by attributing them to excessive test prep - as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio did recently.

- Campbell Brown

It comes down to what your priorities are, and if public education is about kids, then every decision we make should be focused on the question of 'Is this good for a child?' And that should be the driving focus and the priority when we decide what our policies should be and what our laws should be.

- Campbell Brown

I myself have raised plenty of questions about Sarah Palin, much to the annoyance of the McCain campaign. But those questions have been about her qualifications and experience, never her appearance.

- Campbell Brown

The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC, and Tom Brokaw was anchor, the reporters were protected.

- Campbell Brown

There's no reason why anyone's job should become untouchable for the rest of their life.

- Campbell Brown

It's the way tenure works, together with dismissal protections that tenured teachers have, that no other public employee has, which makes it almost impossible to remove a grossly ineffective and incompetent teacher or, in some cases, even an abusive teacher.

- Campbell Brown

I know people talk about poverty and other factors, but there is very little I can do to ensure that a child has a stable two-parent home. But what if we can give them a shot in the classroom with a stable, high-standards environment?

- Campbell Brown

As anyone who has recently seen PG-13 movies knows, the level of violence in them has increased to the point of making the Motion Picture Association of America's voluntary rating system meaningless.

- Campbell Brown

Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin.

- Campbell Brown

Human faces shouldn't get lost amid the statistics.

- Campbell Brown

By resisting almost any change aimed at improving our public schools, teachers' unions have become a ripe target for reformers across the ideological spectrum.

- Campbell Brown

We will fiercely challenge those forces within the education establishment who impede innovation in our schools and who protect and defend inequality and institutional failure.

- Campbell Brown

After a 15-year career in television news, sometimes spent biting my tongue in the name of objectivity and balance, I retired to raise our two small children.

- Campbell Brown

My second-grade teacher went around the class and asked everybody what they were going to be when they grew up. I said, 'I want to travel the world,' and he said, 'You'll be married and pregnant by 21, just like all the girls in this room.'

- Campbell Brown

When an organization is willing to support only lawmakers who are with it 100 percent of the time, it virtually guarantees that the debate will be bitterly partisan.

- Campbell Brown

Our education system is not preparing young people for the world they will face.

- Campbell Brown

We are not yet a society free of sexism, and this will continue to be an issue for all women candidates.

- Campbell Brown

Voters have demonstrated time and again that candidates who buck the teachers' union are rewarded.

- Campbell Brown

Any time you challenge a big powerful person or special interest, there's going to be blowback.

- Campbell Brown

It's better to be honest about your opinions than to pretend you don't have them.

- Campbell Brown

In a situation where it's the child or the adult, I'm going with the child.

- Campbell Brown

When I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste.

- Campbell Brown

Perhaps there is no greater evidence that the teachers' union has swung too far out of the mainstream that they both have been a target of near-constant criticism from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

- Campbell Brown

As David Cameron realizes, we do not have time for the tweaks and increments favored by institutions built to resist change.

- Campbell Brown

When you have Candidate A saying the sky is blue, and Candidate B saying it's a cloudy day, I look outside and I see, well, it's a cloudy day. I should be able to tell my viewers, 'Candidate A is wrong, Candidate B is right,' and not have to say, 'Well, you decide.' Then it would be like I'm an idiot.

- Campbell Brown

The consequences of substandard teaching go far beyond whether college or a good job is in reach. They affect earning potential, with implications throughout a person's life.

- Campbell Brown

You're not going to see me ever be partisan. I'll never take a position on a candidate or an issue.

- Campbell Brown

I'm a mom, and my view of public education begins and ends with the fundamental question: Is this good for children?

- Campbell Brown

Planned Parenthood has a large target on its back.

- Campbell Brown

I don't think it's fair that we cannot guarantee every child in this country a great education and that, in New York City, in some cases, your child is at risk in some part because of the policies the union endorses.

- Campbell Brown

I'm interested in full disclosure for people who give money to politicians. But I'm not a politician. I'm an advocate.

- Campbell Brown

I'm trying to get my head in the game, think about the questions I wanted to ask, breast milk is flying everywhere - over my notes - and I - how do you 'lean in' at that moment? What is the equivalent of that for Wolf Blitzer or Joe Scarborough?

- Campbell Brown

I'm not going to do opinion. That's not who I am.

- Campbell Brown

People say, 'Are you going to be beating up one side or the other side?' It's everybody. It's the entire education establishment that is in power.

- Campbell Brown

TV news has largely given Trump editorial control.

- Campbell Brown

Whenever someone says to me, 'Are you for or against Common Core,' the first question I ask is, 'What do you think Common Core is?' You will get a different answer from every single person. You will literally get a different answer.

- Campbell Brown

Common Core isn't a test, but for some people it is, because they don't like the testing piece of it.

- Campbell Brown

Our educational establishment is failing; it is past time for courage, honesty, and action commensurate with the need, particularly here in the United States.

- Campbell Brown

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

- Campbell Brown

If Boston charters can be stymied despite their extraordinary success, charters anywhere can be stopped.

- Campbell Brown