Jack Kemp Quotes & Sayings

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

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

I think the American people want to see the interactivity between candidates and audiences, and tough questions posed by people and how you handle them under fire. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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

I can't hide my feelings. — Jack Kemp

I am not antigovernment. I would not run a campaign against government. — Jack Kemp

Quarterbacks are always ready. — Jack Kemp

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

There's only one race - it's human. We are all brothers and sisters. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

If you believe these polls, you're making a mistake. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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. — Jack Kemp

Democracy is not a mathematical deduction proved once and for all time. Democracy is a just faith fervently held, commitment to be tested again and again in the fiery furnace of history. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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

To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall. — Jack Kemp

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

People want opportunity so they can earn security. — Jack Kemp

Its no secret that I've never liked tax credits. — Jack Kemp

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

You cannot create employees without first creating employers. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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

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

I don't use labels a lot. — Jack Kemp

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

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

Democracy without morality is impossible. — Jack Kemp

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

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. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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

It's nice to be needed. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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. — Jack Kemp

Football is a metaphor for the kind of country we want to create. It's based on merit. — Jack Kemp

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

We don't need to bring down the rich folk to help the poor. — Jack Kemp

We are all the sons or daughters of immigrants - some more recent than others - but all dedicated to the triumph of an idea that serves as the touchstone of what it means to be an American. This America is the only America that we have hitherto known - if being conservative has anything to do with conserving the principles of our past, then no conservative has any business bashing legal immigration. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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

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. — Jack Kemp

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

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

Every time in this century we've lowered the tax rates across the board, on employment, on saving, investment and risk-taking in this economy, revenues went up, not down. — Jack Kemp

We want peace with all our hearts. But peace cannot be achieved through weakness. — Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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

Just as the left has to be more willing to question 'Government knows best,' the right has to rethink its laissez-faire attitude toward government. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

The Soviet Union represents a threat in terms of might. It is a joke in terms of its economy and what it has to offer the Third World - a laughingstock to countries that are looking for an economic-development model. — Jack Kemp

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

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. — Jack Kemp

The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo. — Jack Kemp

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. — Jack Kemp

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