Jack Kemp Quotes

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

You cannot create employees without first creating employers.

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.

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

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.

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

Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.

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

Some people have theorized that I lurched to prove myself intellectually. But it was not any lurch. It was more a kind of awakening.

With the end of the cold war, all the 'isms' of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism - have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

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

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

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

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

I can't hide my feelings.

The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo.

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

Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all - to different degrees - unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual's effort and reward for that effort.

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

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

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

In a recent fire Bob Dole's library burned down. Both books were lost. And he hadn't even finished coloring one of them.

Of course, every job I ever had I thought I was born for.

I am shocked that Republicans can't explain why our technological and economic advantages are the result of sound monetary and economic policy.

I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn't fall. It was pushed.

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

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

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.

I learned about the market's power when I was traded to the Buffalo Bills for $100.

People want opportunity so they can earn security.

Every team requires unity. A team has to move as one unit, one force, with each person understanding and assisting the roles of his teammates. If the team doesn't do this, whatever the reason, it goes down in defeat. You win or lose as a team, as a family.

It's nice to be needed.

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

The problem is that the economy isn't growing fast enough to accommodate the level of spending produced through the democratic process.

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 can't help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with.

You don't boo at a Kemp rally. You boo at football games.

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

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

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

I can't understand why the Democratic parties seem so hostile to economic growth and business.

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