Jack Kemp Quotes

Winning is like shaving - you do it every day or you wind up looking like a bum.

Conservatives define compassion not by the number of people who recieve some kind of government aid but rather by the number of people who no longer need it.

The power of one man or one woman doing the right thing for the right reason, and at the right time, is the greatest influence in our society.

There's no limit to what free men and free women in a free market with free enterprise can accomplish when people are free to follow their dream.

When people lack jobs, opportunity, and ownership of property they have little or no stake in their communities.

There are no limits to our future if we don't put limits on our people.

He'll call that trickle-down. I call it Niagara Falls.

The only way to oppose a bad idea is to replace it with a good idea.

I believe in civil liberties for homosexuals. I guess I'd have to say I'd draw the line at letting them teach in the schools.

If we are to change America, we must change the United States Congress.

Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out.

The chance to own a home; chance to own an education; chance to get access to capital. This is the real civil rights battle of the twenty-first century.

My passion for ideas is not matched with a passion for partisan or electoral politics.

In America, we tax work, investment, employment, savings, and production, while we subsidize non-work, consumption, and debt. It's time we reverse this trend.

I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.

All too often the Democratic Party has taken the black vote for granted, and all too often the Republican Party has written it off.

Quarterbacks are always ready.

Republicans many times can't get the words 'equality of opportunity' out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.

We must win the war on poverty by enlisting the greatest weapon ever invented - free enterprise

The real problem is deflation. That is the opposite of inflation but equally serious to the borrower.

There ought to be a thoughtful welfare-reform debate that doesn't turn into something that could be called scapegoating.

The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism. They're soft on Democracy.

I think Bush understands the Internet and the incredible expansion of global e-commerce.

There is a kind of victory in good work, no matter how humble.

I unabashedly, unashamedly, unequivocally support the explosion of entrepreneurs in the capitalist system.

Democracy without morality is impossible.

Lately the First Amendment has been interpreted to deny equal protection of the law to those who believe in God. The Constitution established freedom for religion, not freedom from religion!

There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large.

... giving tax incentives for more labor ownership of company stock will do more to create jobs and increase productivity than all the "emergency full employment" bills proposed.

I think I've advanced my views with compassion and tolerance.

Councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.

Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics: I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded and hung in effigy.

The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo.

My wife had a miscarriage. We have rarely talked about it. It did make me more aware of the sanctity of human life, how precious every child is.

The zeitgeist is for cutting spending and balancing the budget. But I do not want the Republican Party to be perceived as putting the budget ahead of people, jobs and education.

I don't use labels a lot.

American society as a whole can never achieve the outer-reaches of potential, so long as it tolerates the inner cities of despair.

I never met a poor person who wanted to soak the rich; they want to get rich.

Health care amounts to l4% of our GNP-a lot of money. It is the size of the Italian economy. And the president turned it over to his wife.

There's always cause for concern if bad policies are pursued.

The only law we broke was the Brezhnev doctrine that once a country is in the Soviet bloc it cannot be overthrown.

I played football.. my football was kosher.. no pigskin.

We are going to make sure that America is open to legal immigration because that is wealth and the talent and the entrepreneurial skills for the 21st Century.

I would be a fool to put my feet down in a position where I can't accommodate metamorphoses.

Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty.

I am not antigovernment. I would not run a campaign against government.

I can't hide my feelings.

The only thing I can do is tell the truth as I see it and let the chips fall where they may.

I've been a kind of a wildcatter. I've been able to say anything I wanted.