Martin O'Malley Quotes

The most fearless hearts, the audacious dreamers, have always maintained a sense of optimism that often flies in the face of the available evidence.

- Martin O'Malley

A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.

- Martin O'Malley

When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.

- Martin O'Malley

Roads do not upgrade or maintain themselves. Bridges do not repair themselves or rebuild themselves.

- Martin O'Malley

The right to vote gives every eligible American a voice in our electoral politics. There's too much at stake to stay silent as this right is eroded.

- Martin O'Malley

I did not dedicate my life to making Baltimore a safer and more just place because it was easy.

- Martin O'Malley

We must preserve our planet and grow our economy simultaneously. We cannot become more prosperous without the living systems upon which our prosperity depends.

- Martin O'Malley

Some people see Baltimore as a hopeless place. Some have even made a lot of money on it.

- Martin O'Malley

My all-time favourite political promise - more a boast than a promise, really - came from former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.'

- Martin O'Malley

I was motivated to go into public life because of the great chasm that exists between justice and injustice in our country. Nowhere is that divide greater than in America's cities.

- Martin O'Malley

I think former President Clinton and even Newt Gingrich have said it was a mistake to repeal Glass Steagall.

- Martin O'Malley

I'm not opposed to free trade if it's fair trade. But I am opposed to bad trade deals.

- Martin O'Malley

Maryland first allowed early voting during the 2010 primary elections. In November 2012, more than 16 percent of registered voters in Maryland cast their ballots during the early voting period, and some polling places, particularly in our larger jurisdictions, witnessed early voting lines that were hours long.

- Martin O'Malley

Some people might look at Baltimore, from afar, and see nothing but hopelessness. I see, in Baltimore, tremendously good and compassionate people, and a tremendous opportunity to save a lot a lives.

- Martin O'Malley

The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members.

- Martin O'Malley

You can't strengthen the ranks of your middle class, you can't strengthen and grow the ranks of your businesses and family-owned businesses, unless you are fiscally responsible.

- Martin O'Malley

The Republican Party is doubling down on this trickle-down theory that says, 'Thou shalt concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. Thou shalt remove regulation from wherever you find it, even on Wall Street. And thou shalt keep wages low for American workers so that we can be more competitive.'

- Martin O'Malley

The answers to feeding hungry children is not fewer dollars to feed hungry children, it's to do more. It is to raise the minimum wage. It is to increase, not dismantle, the earned income tax credit. It is to make college more affordable for more middle class families, not more expensive. These are the things that grow our middle class.

- Martin O'Malley

Putting middle class families in jeopardy in order to protect the wealthiest among us isn't consistent with the values and priorities that most Americans share.

- Martin O'Malley

I believe that we do our country a disservice when we make it harder for new American immigrants to abide by the rules of the road and obtain drivers licenses.

- Martin O'Malley

If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.

- Martin O'Malley

In times of adversity - for the country we love - Maryland always chooses to move forward. Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we move forward or back: this too is a choice.

- Martin O'Malley

There is no legislative change that can be made to make up for an economy that's not growing and not expanding.

- Martin O'Malley

Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.

- Martin O'Malley

I think it would be an extreme poverty indeed if there weren't more than one person willing to compete for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

- Martin O'Malley

Putting aside competitive interests for a new kind of collaboration, Maryland pioneered a real-time encounter notification service to alert primary care doctors when their patients are hospitalized.

- Martin O'Malley

There are more repercussions for a person being a chronic speeding violator in our country, than there is for a big bank being a chronic violator of S.E.C. rules!

- Martin O'Malley

We have to wrap this imperative of addressing climate change in a prosperity framework, and secondly we have to do a much better job of putting forward an American jobs agenda that's a match for the climate challenge.

- Martin O'Malley

Gilles Duceppe avoids making campaign promises altogether so he can emphasize that his Bloc Quebecois has only one objective: to prevent Harper from forming a majority government.

- Martin O'Malley

None of us wants to pay more at the pump.

- Martin O'Malley

Doing difficult things like passing marriage equality, passing the Dream Act, doing common sense things that allow new American immigrants to fully participate, pay their taxes, play by the rules and take care of their families. That's the inclusive America that I believe all of us want to move to.

- Martin O'Malley

The Offshore Wind Energy Act could be not only a jobs creator, but also a history maker.

- Martin O'Malley

We are already witnessing a transformation in the U.S. economy to increased production of lower carbon energy through fuel switching to natural gas and expansion of wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable non-carbon intensive energy sources.

- Martin O'Malley

We have concentrated wealth and capital to such a degree that the vast majority of us don't have the discretionary dollars to make our economy go and grow.

- Martin O'Malley

Job creation is a choice. Investing in cleaner, greener technologies that allow us to strike a more sustainable balance with the other living systems of this earth - this, too, is a choice.

- Martin O'Malley

Maryland schools succeed because we have never stopped investing in our students and doing the things that work.

- Martin O'Malley

There are people in whole parts of our cities who are being totally left behind and disregarded. They are unheard. They are told they are unneeded by this economy. And that extreme poverty breeds conditions for extreme violence.

- Martin O'Malley

Typically, I don't get to unwind after a day at work.

- Martin O'Malley

I believe that there are new perspectives that are needed in order for us to resolve the problems that we face as Americans and also the problems we face as people on this planet, and I believe that new perspective and new leadership is needed.

- Martin O'Malley

I've been an executive and a progressive executive with a record of accomplishments.

- Martin O'Malley

If workers have less money in their pockets to put food on the table, they will be spending less money; your economy will suffer.

- Martin O'Malley

In 2013, Maryland had the second highest job creation rate of any state in the Mid Atlantic region - faster than both Pennsylvania and Virginia.

- Martin O'Malley

Our politics has been greatly impacted, for the worse, by big money and the concentration of big money.

- Martin O'Malley

Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.

- Martin O'Malley

When I was in Grade 9, there was an election for high school president, and one of the candidates told us that if we elected him, he would abolish homework. He promised this to the entire student body from the stage in the school gymnasium.

- Martin O'Malley

Maryland is home to one of the world's most highly skilled, highly educated workforces.

- Martin O'Malley

We are a people of many different religions and many different faiths. The only way forward in a pluralistic society of diverse faiths such as ours is to have laws that protect and respect the freedom of all, equally.

- Martin O'Malley

The most valuable investment we can make is in our children's education. When we make education a priority, we give our children opportunity. Opportunity to learn at higher levels than their parents were able to learn; to earn at higher levels than we were able to earn.

- Martin O'Malley

All of us, wherever we happen to stand on the marriage equality issue, can agree that all our children deserve the opportunity to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home, protected equally under the law.

- Martin O'Malley

Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers.

- Martin O'Malley

There is no greater ladder into the middle class than education.

- Martin O'Malley

I'm not for the sort of trade deals that hollow out our standards while they hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.

- Martin O'Malley

Marylanders have led the nation in adopting a balanced approach to revenues and investments because we know that in order to maintain and build the #1 public schools in the nation, we had to ask everyone to pay their fair share. We need Congress to do the same.

- Martin O'Malley

As mayor, I got used to the fact that when you walked out of the house in the morning to pick up the newspaper in your boxers, there could be a camera there.

- Martin O'Malley

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

- Martin O'Malley

Who can sit back as our towns and cities are torn apart by violence and be content with the status quo?

- Martin O'Malley

People are looking for a leader independent of powerful, wealthy special interests that always push to the front of the line.

- Martin O'Malley

But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.

- Martin O'Malley

We have now under President Obama's leadership had 29 months in a row of private sector job growth. That stretch of positive private sector job growth hasn't happened since 2005. We still have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction.

- Martin O'Malley

We haven't had an agenda for American cities probably since at least Jimmy Carter. We have left cities to fend for themselves.

- Martin O'Malley

We live in a very different world than the one that we inherited from our parents and from our grandparents. Times are changing, and states must adapt to win.

- Martin O'Malley

There are some rights that are so fundamental to our society that you'd think the public debate would be closed on them. The right of every American citizen to vote - regardless of age, race, or income level - is one of them.

- Martin O'Malley

There is an adage in business that says that you should only compete when you have a competitive advantage. When it comes to cybersecurity, Maryland has a whole host of competitive advantages.

- Martin O'Malley

If a bank's too big so that it can't fail without hurting our economy, well then, it's too big.

- Martin O'Malley

There is not a country on earth that could get its fiscal house in order by shrinking opportunity and depressing growth.

- Martin O'Malley

Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives.

- Martin O'Malley

I am not surprised that this is a longer bit of work than many of us would have hoped. It is not where any of us would have hoped it is. And I think we need to give credit to the Republicans in Congress who have done everything they can to defeat every jobs bill and slow down the economy.

- Martin O'Malley

I think it's really, really important to grow the consensus and to realize that there is always some value that can be shared with another American, on any issue. Starting from those points of common belief and shared values is very, I think, important to forging the consensus that allows these issues to more forward.

- Martin O'Malley

Public trust is essential to public safety.

- Martin O'Malley

While different states and cities might look to different strategies for protecting public safety, we all can agree on this: we lose too many American lives to gun violence.

- Martin O'Malley

Justice must be done in investigating the tragic death of Mr. Freddie Gray. His family deserves our deepest sympathy and respect for their loss, and our admiration for their courage in calling us, as a city, to act as our better selves.

- Martin O'Malley

Leadership is about making the right decision and the best decision before, sometimes, it becomes entirely popular.

- Martin O'Malley

It's great that Maryland is tied for having the lowest wage gap between our working men and women of any state in the nation, but there's more work to do to eliminate that gap entirely.

- Martin O'Malley

So, look, in order to move our country forward, we have to do the things our parents and grandparents did. They believed enough in our country to invest in our country, to create jobs, to make modern investments. And those are the things that we need to get back to with a balanced approach.

- Martin O'Malley

We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession. That's why we need to continue to move forward.

- Martin O'Malley

Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most.

- Martin O'Malley

Maryland is among the nation's most vulnerable states to the effects of sea level rise from climate change, and we are taking strong action to reduce carbon pollution.

- Martin O'Malley

When the citizens of Baltimore banded together to repel the British during the War of 1812, three in five were immigrants, and one in five was black - some were free, some slaves.

- Martin O'Malley

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we give our children a future of more or a future of less - this, too, is a choice.

- Martin O'Malley

Secretary Clinton is perfectly capable of defending her own service in office.

- Martin O'Malley

To create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments.

- Martin O'Malley

Senator Mikulski has done an outstanding job representing Maryland in the U.S. Senate for nearly 30 years.

- Martin O'Malley

There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.

- Martin O'Malley

Reversing deforestation is complicated; planting a tree is simple.

- Martin O'Malley

No woman who works full time and plays by the rules should have to raise her family in poverty.

- Martin O'Malley

Extreme poverty is extremely dangerous.

- Martin O'Malley

Oh, you know what, it's an honor to be mentioned in the company of those that might lead our country forward after President Obama.

- Martin O'Malley

We do ourselves a disservice when some of us cave to the myth that Social Security somehow drives the deficit.

- Martin O'Malley

The Republicans have kind of painted themselves into a kind of a real demographic corner, if you will.

- Martin O'Malley

Civil rights was not an impossible dream. Thousands of brave African Americans stepped forward to make it happen.

- Martin O'Malley

Together with President Obama, we are moving America forward, not back.

- Martin O'Malley

We can't expect Wall Street to police itself - that's why we have a federal government.

- Martin O'Malley

Progressive leaders always try to take action on the forward edge of that movement, movement toward greater respect for the equal rights of all.

- Martin O'Malley

The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all.

- Martin O'Malley

I believe that the best way to campaign is one-on-one with people.

- Martin O'Malley

We have to raise the minimum wage.

- Martin O'Malley

The march of progress must continue.

- Martin O'Malley

Making government more efficient and more effective need not be a partisan issue.

- Martin O'Malley

I think the best campaigns are campaigns of ideas and substance.

- Martin O'Malley

It's time to put the national interest before the interests of Wall Street.

- Martin O'Malley

God doesn't make mistakes and has made each of us in his own image. God is simply love. There should be no fear in love.

- Martin O'Malley

We can never completely prevent another tragedy like the Boston Marathon attacks from happening. But every American should ask themselves if their community is as prepared as it could be.

- Martin O'Malley

If any mayor reduced school funding by 33 percent and called it the 'Strengthening Our Schools Initiative,' I think they'd be excoriated.

- Martin O'Malley

Climate change is transforming the world in profound ways that continue to evolve.

- Martin O'Malley

The presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families.

- Martin O'Malley

I think that the S.E.C. has been pretty feckless when it comes to reigning in reckless behavior on Wall Street.

- Martin O'Malley

In Maryland, we consider ourselves pro-growth Americans.

- Martin O'Malley

Between 1999 and 2009, the people of Baltimore achieved the greatest reduction in crime of America's largest cities.

- Martin O'Malley

The attitude in Baltimore in 1999 was almost one of resignation, that our problems were bigger than our capacity to handle them.

- Martin O'Malley

History is full of times when the inevitable front-runner is inevitable right up until he or she is no longer inevitable.

- Martin O'Malley

I believe marriage is a human right, not a state right.

- Martin O'Malley

Twenty-first century buildings support a 21st century education - because it is difficult to learn or to teach if you are shivering.

- Martin O'Malley

I go to the gym pretty regularly.

- Martin O'Malley

Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results.

- Martin O'Malley

People's trust in their public institutions depends on their government getting results.

- Martin O'Malley

If we want better results, we have to make better choices.

- Martin O'Malley

The Center for American Progress rates Maryland as the best state in the nation for women. I couldn't agree more.

- Martin O'Malley

Democrats haven't been functioning effectively as a party at the national level.

- Martin O'Malley

Progress is a choice.

- Martin O'Malley

I have 15 years of executive experience as a big-city mayor and as a governor.

- Martin O'Malley

There are times in Annapolis when a governor's support can move an issue over the goal line.

- Martin O'Malley

I like Iowa. I know Iowa. I've spent some time in Iowa. Good people in Iowa. It's a great state.

- Martin O'Malley

I didn't run for mayor because everything was going great in Baltimore in 1999.

- Martin O'Malley

Protecting our land, our air and our water is a very important thing that we can only do together.

- Martin O'Malley

We make our own future; we govern ourselves, and to govern is to choose.

- Martin O'Malley