Top 55 Populist Quotes

Governments can’t escape from taking tough steps. One can’t be populist about it. You can’t flirt with such serious issues like security.

Trump is a populist in the same mold as the nineteenth-century Populists who gave their name to American grassroots political movements. Historians and pundits argued themselves blue in the face over whether Populists were reactionary or progressive, but they were both.

There is absolutely no point in not being a populist. What I feel emboldened to do is to take something which is a minority interest and make it accessible without dumbing it down. I’m such an enthusiast for peculiar things, things that are perhaps a bit avant-garde, and try and involve everyone.

After the global financial crisis of 2008, populist uprisings had sprouted across Europe. Putin and his strategists sensed the beginnings of a larger uprising that could upend the Continent and make life uncomfortable for his geostrategic competitors.

Paralysis in decision-making breeds frustration and contempt from the electorate, and provides the perfect seedbed for demagogues who fill the vacuum with populist simplicities, hatred of opposition and lies.

I believe that the Conservative party is at its best when it’s a pro-business, pragmatic party, so to appeal to the country, and the country loses out significantly if the centre right of politics becomes much more populist, nationalist, and more right of centre.

Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, is a true populist; Senator Bernie Sanders, the former U.S. presidential candidate who campaigned for Hillary Clinton after losing his battle for the Democratic Party‘s nomination, is not.

Like the Britain of Beaverbrook and Kipling, Japan in the early twentieth century was a jingoistic nation, subduing weaker countries with the help of populist politicians and sensationalist journalism.

Hindi news is much more determinedly populist and lowbrow than the English channels.

Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy.

Conservative beliefs are not based on personal whims or feelings or polls but rather anchored in defensible core, time-tested positions. It’s what makes a conservative somewhat boring compared to the liberal, independent, or populist.

Compromise disappoints those who buy into the most ambitious and simplistic populist slogans.

As with fascism, the rise of Islamic totalitarianism has partly to do with its populist appeal to the class resentments of an economically oppressed population and to anger at political subordination and humiliation.

If I had chosen the populist course, it would have been a breach of the trust placed in me by the people.

I tell the truth and they call me a fascist, a racist, an ugly, dirty, nasty, xenophobic populist.

I’m a populist. I’m the people’s designer… It’s important that there are price points that allow people in who maybe don’t have the ability to have higher-ticket items – but they can still have something very emblematic of the collection.

Conservatives who decried Trump’s rise (and those who scoffed at his chances of winning a single primary were legion) are the same ‘purist’ boxing snobs who could never grasp the popularity – and populist legitimacy – of wrestling.

Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it.

When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre.

Extremists and populist movements are exploiting people’s fear of those who are not like us. We can see the consequences in the form of terrorism and racially motivated violence.

All previous populist movements were demanding things from governments, whereas the Tea Party is saying, ‘Give us less, go away.’ That’s heartening to see.

I don’t see myself as particularly highbrow. I am much more populist.

I think it’s always hard for people to get their head around the fact that populist, commercial films can also actually be great works of art.

Populist promises to reverse every tough decision are nothing but empty rhetoric, irresponsible leadership, and bad politics. They are not the solution to Ireland‘s problems.

You see in times of crisis that extremist forces, populist forces, have a better ground to oversimplify things and to manipulate feelings. Feelings of fear.

I’ve always been interested in the news, but I’ve always been interested in what’s popular. I’ve always had a little bit of a populist take on things. Which I know is interesting when you talk about Donald Trump.

I do not think it is a coincidence that young people gravitated toward populist voices in the French election and that the two issue positions where Donald Trump and young voters seem to agree most – global engagement and trade – are rooted in populism.

If you can’t be a populist in Arkansas, you ain’t going to be a populist in Washington.

Coming from Buffalo, N.Y., I recognize the distinct difference between inside-the-Beltway conservatives and lake-shore conservatives. It’s populist conservatism.

It’s a very beautiful word, populism. I’m proud to be a populist.

Trump might have a populist message that resonates with some voters, but the man doesn’t care about any of the people he’s appealing to.

There are voters out there that a moralistic and populist conservative right might win but a flagrantly hypocritical and ethnonationalist conservatism cannot.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in ‘Veep.’ She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play ‘Veep’ would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn’t one.

In the wake of a Trump victory, the Democratic Party is tacking to the left in an attempt to harness the populist message that put Trump in the White House.

The most unusual thing about Clinton as a pol is that he listens. Listens and remembers. If he does dance with them that brung him, not them that gave him big money, we will have a populist on our hands.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

We are doing politics differently – smart, populist, political movement.

The normalization of Trump is one indicator that there may be less to the populist insurrection than imagined.

It’s innate in me to be a Democrat – a true Southern populist kind of Democrat. There’s not a lot of those anymore. I’m not saying I’m right or wrong. That’s just the way I feel.

The thing is, it’s much easier to be a rightwing populist than a leftwing one, because the left always have to explain why things are the way they are. The right can just blame the foreigners.

Authoritarians have always been here. But the features of a given moment make that way of thinking more or less appealing. Germany in the 1920s, when people are starving, suddenly makes ‘populist’ answers and scapegoating different groups as the source of the problem much more appealing.

Limbaugh can rightly be said to be the greatest populist expositor of conservatism in America since Reagan, and the link between the Reagan generation and the so-called Rush Babies.

Some voters live in a so-called populist bubble, where they hear nationalist and xenophobic messages, learn to distrust fact-based media and evidence-based science, and become receptive to conspiracy theories and suspicious of democratic institutions.

In truth, the ‘populist anger’ fueling Trump’s coalition is fundamentally different from Sanders’ ‘progressive populism.’ The superficial similarities between the two end when they talk about solutions.

I think Trump had this general populist agenda but has not been particularly adept at using the levers of power in Washington.

American populist politics has a long tradition, from Andrew Jackson to Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy. But the politician Trump is most like could be George Wallace.

If we had a populist president who didn’t alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

American populism is no stranger to our political life. From the earliest anti-Federalists to William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, and George Wallace, and many in between, we’ve sampled the populist temptation, often in times of national distress and dislocation.

Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.

In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It’s hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce.

I think the rise of progressives is the biggest storyline there is, whether it’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Kara Eastman or Randy Bryce, Richard Ojeda – real populist progressives that are willing to actually fight for the progressive message rather than the lukewarm establishment Democrats.

Even some of my Republican friends say I have a populist, progressive streak. I am not a doctrinaire, anti-government person.

There’s a certain irreverent, populist ‘realness‘ to Donald Trump’s much-maligned Twitter account and off-the-cuff remarks to the press. His down-to-earth style is out of place in the Washington, D.C. swamp-world of uptight professional politicians, but that’s exactly what makes him so appealing to regular people.

Politicians and leaders who see the media as ‘the enemy within‘ divide society into two clashing cultural camps. Populist demagogues benefit from binary oppositions.