Dick Gephardt Quotes

Unlike the Contract with America, which was created by Washington pollsters and insiders, Families First was developed from the grassroots up. Congressional Democrats from across the country spent months meeting with people back home, asking them what issues were important to them, and what Congress could do to make their lives a little easier.

I think in some cases busing did improve the situation in some areas; in some cases it didn't. We had busing in St. Louis, and it has been ended and we are using other methods of trying to better integrate the schools.

The deficit only became a big problem in the Reagan-Bush years. For 12 years, Republican presidents talked about balancing the budget, but failed to propose one.

Why would we want to keep a tax cut that's failed? Why would we not want to go back to the Clinton tax code? And why would we not want to help every family more with a health-care plan like mine? Let's help average people. Let's be Democrats.

My parents wanted me to be a Baptist minister. I was a youth minister in my church when I was still in college. And I was in a lot of theater in high school, and at Northwestern.

America is a great country. We are so wealthy. But our one remaining challenge is to fulfill the potential of all our people. And the only way we can do that is to try to bring everybody together to a higher place.

I've always believed as a value that the government has a vital - not overwhelming, but vital - role to play in furthering human welfare and good. I think we have an important supportive role to play, hopefully intelligent and sensible.

I think it's time we had a president who carried the same life experiences into the White House as most ordinary Americans.

The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students.

Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy.

Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo
as gratifying as it may be for some
it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone.

The sanctity of a woman's right to control her own destiny is a moral force of its own ... I came to realize that the question of choice is to be answered, not by the state, but by the individual.

One of the big mistakes Republicans made with the Contract with America is that they tried to do too much too fast, and people revolted against it.

I'm running for president because I've had enough of the oil barons, the status-quo apologists, the special-interest lobbyists running amok.

And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'

Like father, like son, four years and this president is done.

I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.

My healthcare plan puts more money into average families' pockets than the Bush tax cuts ... He's got a lousy tax cut. It's only good for the super wealthy. I've got a tax cut that will help ordinary people.

I led the fight for the Clinton health care plan in 1994. We failed. I learned from that experience. What I learned is you can't pass a complicated government-run plan.

We can see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelt's and Winston Churchill's vision for peace for the post-war period.

You don't lock into a ten-year family budget. You take it a year at a time - maybe even six months at a time. And then if the income really comes in the way you hope it does, then you can make some of those expenditures that you've been waiting to make. We think that same principle should apply to the national family we call America.

I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.

Al Gore is a good man. He is a decent, caring man. He listens to his heart and his head. He loves his family.

I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.

In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share ... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.

I've thought a lot about the world and how George Bush sees the world and it ain't even close.

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.

My mother used to say, 'You gotta exercise.' She would really pound on me to exercise every day. She was very physically fit; she was on the basketball team in high school in St. Louis in the 1920s, when women didn't do that. And she taught me to play tennis, taught me to walk and run, and I ran for 30 years pretty religiously.

I grew up in a household that was a labor household. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver. My mother was a secretary. Neither of them got through high school. But they worked hard and they gave me very, very important opportunities to go to school, get a good education.

I was raised in a working class family of Baptist faith, and I went to college on a church scholarship where early teachings were reinforced. Abortion was wrong, I was taught.

I think a lot of people think I was born in a blue suit, on the David Brinkley show. And that isn't me. I am much more that kid who grew up in South St. Louis, in a very modest household, with a simple background with parents who didn't get through high school.

Every proposal I'm making, every idea I'm advancing has a single, central purpose: to revive a failing economy and give working Americans the help and security they need.

If the economy is still going forward, even at 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, I think most people will stick with President Obama. I think people look at politics like they hire a plumber. I hire you to fix the bad pipe. If you fix it, I'll rehire you. If you don't fix it, I'm not going to rehire you.

Life is the division of human cells, a process which begins at conception.

Democracy is interactive ... It's a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.