Quotes from Jack Kemp

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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