Kamala Harris Quotes
Vice Preseiden of the United States
My mother had a saying: 'Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you're not the last.'
I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else's shoes, and identify and reject false choices.
I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.
I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.
Here's the thing: every office I've run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.
The American dream belongs to all of us.
I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.
What's important for my daughter to know is that... if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are good, fair, and just, and they want their country to reflect those ideals.
So many people trip in front of them because they're looking over there or up ahead.
You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.
The bells will ring and the marriages will begin. And it's a great day in our state for equal protection under the law for all people.
My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.
My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.
What we all want is public safety. We don't want rhetoric that's framed through ideology.
If we do not lift up women and families, everyone will fall short.
I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother's kitchen. If I don't have time to cook, I'll just read a cookbook.
I believe in that old adage that 'as goes California, so goes the country.'
To change criminal justice policy in any meaningful way means to propose changing a very longstanding system. It's not realistic to think you can do it overnight.
My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.
We don't want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful - not only to that member of the community but the entire community.
I think Hillary Clinton could do whatever she puts her mind to. I really do. She's incredibly dedicated to public service, she is smart as a whip, and she's effective.
I'm a career prosecutor. I have been trained, and my experience over decades, is to make decisions after a review of the evidence and the facts. And not to jump up with grand gestures before I've done that. Some might interpret that as being cautious. I would tell you that's just responsible.
I'm opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.
A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.
These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don't know who is calling that child.
I'm one of the luckiest people on earth.
If you want to deal with an epidemic - crime or health - the smartest and most effective and cheapest way to deal with it is prevention first.
I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.
I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard. Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it's not even a contact sport - it's a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns.
Over the course of my career in law enforcement, I have witnessed over and over again the selflessness and sacrifice of law enforcement who lay their lives on the line every day to protect people who they will never meet and people who will never know their names.
Racism is real in this country.
I've had the good fortune and blessing to run for the offices for which I really wanted to do the work.
Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It's a marathon.
We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, period.
To be smart on crime, we should not be in a position of constantly reacting to crime after it happens. We should be looking at preventing crime before it happens.
In this great country, we celebrate success. We don't want to penalize those who have done well.
There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.
I was standing on a ladder outside the Homestead juvenile immigrant detention center outside Miami, looking over the fence, and I saw children lined up like prisoners. They had been separated from their families and put in this private detention facility. It was horrible.
I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.
I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone's life.
Part of my focus on what we need to do around smart gun safety laws is recognize we have to have more enforcement around gun dealers.
Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.
With the advent of DNA, we know that people have been convicted and sentenced to death who later proved not to be guilty of the crime.
I'm not good at talking about myself.
Well, yeah, people are working in our country. You know what? They're working two and three jobs, and in our America, people should not have to work more than one job to be able to put food on the table and have a roof over their head.
Generally speaking, the public appetite for criminal justice policy is just tough talk.
I do not believe that government should be in the business of telling women what they should do with their bodies.
I just think it's so important not to take yourself too seriously.
We've got to keep our eye on what's happening with Russia and North Korea. We cannot lose sight of domestic policy, either. Healthcare. Immigration. Climate change.
A family shares hardships and a connected history.
I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time - the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.
I'll be judged on the body of work and not the popularity of any one decision.
Let's be clear about this, and let's be clear: we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison.
I think I have every piece of music Bob Marley ever made.
Every day there are homeowners in California who will either receive relief so they can stay in their home, or will be in the foreclosure process and potentially lose their home. And that always weighed heavily on my mind.
I'm prepared to say that law enforcement should be allowed to seize the guns of those who are suspected to be involved in domestic terrorism.
I love being in a courtroom.
'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.
We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.
DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they've ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.
I disagree with any policy that would turn America's back on people who are fleeing harm. I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for.
I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother - my mother's mother - who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.
I have a difficult time sitting down for long periods.
Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show 'Master of None,' but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.
Who of us has not had that situation where you've got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, 'Well, I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this?' Let's eliminate all of that.
I convened the first-ever national training conference for prosecutors on how to promote and deal with hate crime issues in terms of prosecutions and also protocol for defeating the gay panic defense.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.
And so I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.
I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.
California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State.
I support Medicare for all. It is my preferred policy.
What we know is smartphones are everywhere and they are rich in data. What we know is that there are apps once downloaded by the consumer that will also in turn download the consumers' contact book. Most consumers don't want that to happen and don't know it's happening.
Homophobia is real in this country.
If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today, I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States.
My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley.
Sexism is real in this country.
Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.
I believe you've got to do your due diligence.
Anti-Semitism is real in this country.
History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.
Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That's not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That's not leadership. That's abandoning our middle class.
In California, we have some of the strongest consumer protection laws in the country. While it is easy to conceive of innovation and regulation as mutually exclusive, California is proof that we can do both. We can innovate responsibly.
I've had the honor of speaking at many commencements.
We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.
We don't have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures - and I quote - 'hit the bottom' so the market could - I quote - 'run its course.'
We don't have to let extremists define us.
People who work for me know that family comes first. And I'm fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don't have to live two separate lives.
Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.
As a young prosecutor right out of law school at the Alameda County DA's office that Earl Warren once led, I started my work.
It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.
Instead of giving corporations a big tax cut, let's give the middle class a real, permanent tax cut.
Hate crime is not new in the United States.
The bottom line on the Hyde Amendment is that it is directly, in effect, targeting poor women and women who don't have money.
California has a special relationship with the Internet. Many of the core technologies that power the Internet were invented here. Many of the most successful online entrepreneurs and content creators - in business, the arts, and countless other endeavors - got their start here.