Elizabeth Ann Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a progressive, Warren has focused on consumer protection, equitable economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the Senate. Warren was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, ultimately finishing third.
Before entering politics, Elizabeth Warren established herself as a leading scholar in commercial and bankruptcy law. Earning degrees from the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School, she taught at prestigious universities like Harvard and authored numerous books and articles. This academic background laid the foundation for her future career advocating for consumer protection and financial reform. Elizabeth Warren’s career trajectory shifted from legal academia to public policy advocacy. Before entering politics, she opposed legislation restricting bankruptcy access and later gained national recognition for advocating stricter banking regulations after the 2008 financial crisis. She played a key role in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solidifying her image as a consumer advocate. In 2012, she became the first female senator from Massachusetts and served two terms before unsuccessfully running for president in 2020.
Elizabeth Warren Quotes
1. “We don’t win what we don’t fight for.”
— Elizabeth Warren
2. “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
— Elizabeth Warren
3. “It’s better to fight because if you don’t fight, you can’t win. Besides, even when you don’t win, you can change the game.”
— Elizabeth Warren
4. “If you don’t fight, you can’t win.”
— Elizabeth Warren
5. “Keep a little space in your heart for the improbable. You won’t regret it.”
— Elizabeth Warren
6. “People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they’re right. The system is rigged.”
— Elizabeth Warren
7. “It’s a simple idea: We all do better when we work together and invest in our future.”
— Elizabeth Warren
8. “College students today are drowning in debt, and it is hurting them and hurting our economy. We must find a way to help families pay for college without condemning them to a lifetime of indebtedness.”
— Elizabeth Warren
9. “Balancing your money is the key to having enough.”
— Elizabeth Warren
10. “This country isn’t working for working people. It’s working only for people at the top. That’s not the American dream. That’s the American nightmare.”
— Elizabeth Warren
11. “It’s so easy to focus on what could go wrong, on what else you could do before you try the thing you really want to do. No. Just get out there and try.”
— Elizabeth Warren
12. “The total amount of money that Wall Street handed out in bonuses last year was double the total income of ALL full-time minimum wage workers. That’s obscene.”
— Elizabeth Warren
13. “It’s one thing for Hillary Clinton to adopt some anti-Wall Street language to try to appeal to progressives.”
— Elizabeth Warren
14. “The game is rigged to work for those who already have money and power.”
— Elizabeth Warren
15. “The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America’s middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!”
— Elizabeth Warren
16. “The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it’s not the poorest. It’s not the people at the economic fringes. It’s people who worked hard and played by the rules.”
— Elizabeth Warren
17. “When you have no real power, go public – really public. The public is where the real power is.”
— Elizabeth Warren
18. “When you fight back and win, even in small battles, it makes a difference in who you become. You’re better for it. That’s what persistence is about. It’s a ferocious optimism.”
— Elizabeth Warren
19. “Americans are fighters. We’re tough, resourceful, and creative, and if we have the chance to fight on a level playing field, where everyone pays a fair share and everyone has a real shot, then no one – no one can stop us.”
— Elizabeth Warren
20. “Some of the largest financial institutions can build a profit model on tricking people.”
— Elizabeth Warren
21. “It’s a story about what’s worth fighting for, and how sometimes, even when we fight against very powerful opponents, we can win.”
— Elizabeth Warren
22. “When conservatives talk about opportunity, they mean opportunities for the rich to get richer, for the powerful to get more powerful.”
— Elizabeth Warren
23. “Credit cards are like snakes: Handle ’em long enough, and one will bite you.”
— Elizabeth Warren
24. “The choice before us is simple. Will we continue to subsidize the dirty fossil fuels of the past, or will we transition to 21st-century clean, renewable energy?”
— Elizabeth Warren
25. “Israel has the right to shell Palestinian hospitals and schools out of self-defense…”
— Elizabeth Warren
26. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People – powerful people – listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders. I.”
— Elizabeth Warren
27. “Everybody in this room knows the basic rule: if you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.”
— Elizabeth Warren
28. “My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.”
— Elizabeth Warren
29. “No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don’t run this country for corporations, we run it for people.”
— Elizabeth Warren
30. “I have a daughter and I have granddaughters and I will never vote to let a group of backward-looking ideologues cut women’s access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we are not going back, not ever.”
— Elizabeth Warren
31. “Cars, toys, aspirin, meat, toasters, water – nearly every product sold has passed basic safety regulations well in advance of being marketed and sold. But consumer credit is a kind of buyer-beware, Wild West. That is partly the result of history.”
— Elizabeth Warren
32. “Personal responsibility matters. There are no excuses for those who spend money on things they cannot afford. But it’s a whole lot harder to act responsibly when consumer credit contracts are designed to be incomprehensible when prices are obscure and risks are hidden.”
— Elizabeth Warren
33. “I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters – people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them – not one – stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
— Elizabeth Warren
34. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.”
— Elizabeth Warren
35. “That’s how we build the economy of the future. An economy with more jobs and less debt, we root it in fairness. We grow it with opportunity. And we build it together.”
— Elizabeth Warren
36. “You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything in your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.”
— Elizabeth Warren
37. “Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God Bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and paid forward for the next kid who comes along.”
— Elizabeth Warren
38. “A lot of people think that regulations bring higher costs, but regulation is also about making sure that someone doesn’t get to beat out the competition because they’re dumping filth in the river or spewing poisons in the air.”
— Elizabeth Warren
39. “The way I see it, no one in this country should work full-time and still live in poverty – period.”
— Elizabeth Warren
40. “Pundits talk about ‘populist rage’ as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class.”
— Elizabeth Warren
41. “Women tend to vote for the economic interests of their families and to speak out on family economic issues. For men, there’s often much more focus on the idea of personal failure: “If I’m not winning this great economic game, it must be my fault.””
— Elizabeth Warren
42. “Are you ready to fight for good jobs and a solid level playing field? Are you ready to prove to another generation of Americans that we can build a better country and a newer world? Joe Biden is ready. Barack Obama is ready. I am ready. You’re ready.”
— Elizabeth Warren
43. “I oppose the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It’s an ill-conceived project that would lock us into further dependence on some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet.”
— Elizabeth Warren
44. “Accountability for the largest financial institutions on Wall Street is the bedrock for a strong economy. Hard-working families and honest businesses cannot survive in a world where the rules don’t keep the marketplace honest.”
— Elizabeth Warren
45. “I’m willing to throw my body in front of the bus to stop bad ideas.”
— Elizabeth Warren
46. “It is not the job of the Department of Education to maximize profits for the government at the cost of squeezing students who are struggling to get an education.”
— Elizabeth Warren
47. “Meaningful rules in the consumer credit market can accelerate economic recovery. Rules would increase consumer confidence and, more importantly, weed out all the tricks and traps that sap families of billions of dollars annually.”
— Elizabeth Warren
48. “The poor pay more, and that’s one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.”
— Elizabeth Warren
49. “Nobody’s safe. Health insurance? That didn’t protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.”
— Elizabeth Warren
50. “It takes money to run political campaigns. This is a cancer growing on the soul of our democracy.”
— Elizabeth Warren
51. “We’re Americans. We celebrate success. We just don’t want the game to be rigged.”
— Elizabeth Warren
52. “Everything we stand for can be expressed in terms of how we spend our money.”
— Elizabeth Warren
53. “Our veterans deserve the very best, and that means ensuring that America’s veterans receive high-quality services and care when they come back home.”
— Elizabeth Warren
54. “President Obama believes in a level playing field.”
— Elizabeth Warren
55. “The credit card companies have put the loan sharks out of business.”
— Elizabeth Warren
