Quotes from Joe Lhota

I cannot be separated from Rudy Giuliani, but I am also not Rudy Giuliani.

I have voted for a Republican for president ever since I was voting and since I was 18 years old.

I would leave school every day and walk to my grandparents' house under the El because everyone worked. I was 6 and walking home alone from school. It was a different city and a different time.

Mayors of New York have been elected not because of their party label, but because of their philosophy and their approach overall, and that has been since time immemoriam in New York, that people are not party-oriented in New York.

I'm never surprised by the insensitivity of 'The New York Times' editorial board.

There is no reason for anybody to have an assault weapon.

My favorite is always the book that I'm currently reading.

There were 23 or 24 separate tax cuts during the Giuliani administration. I'd love to be able to equal that.

I was born here in the city, born in the Bronx. Son of a cop. One grandfather was a taxi driver; the other was a firefighter. New York is in my DNA.

Government is to point you in the right direction, and not to do everything for you.

It's been 35 years since I left school. Almost nine of them were in government; all the rest were in the private sector. And I've proven over time to be a great leader.

Would I be the 3rd term of Rudy Giuliani or the 4th term of Mike Bloomberg? It'll be neither. It'll be the first term of Joe Lhota. We're all different.

I've been marching in every single ethnic nationality parade all throughout the City of New York. We're all Americans first and foremost, but people understand their heritage and it's good to see.

What I learned from 9/11 that is really important, first and foremost, you have to motivate all the workers and understand that they've left their families to help clean up a pretty awful situation. Every time you have an emergency management situation, it's all about teamwork.

The bracelet says 'Fear Nothing.' It was given to me by my friends, and it was made for me and my friends during the period of time that I was going through chemotherapy. And I still wear it, because it's a great reminder of friendship and how my buddies and others came together in my time of need.

I still am a virulent anti-communist. It is a bad system, an immoral system, and one that takes away the rights of people and the rights of individuals. And everywhere it's gone, it's failed.

I am extremely respectful of the Jewish community. You know, I am Christian. I think of Jews as my older brothers. I mean, there wouldn't be Christianity without the Jewish religion. There is a direct connection between the two of them.

The mayor of New York is the chief executive of the city. It is a complex organization and it requires the requisite skills to understand how to be the leader of the people and manage the government of N.Y.

In 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on.

My dad was a New York City cop. His father was a New York City fireman. And my mother's dad was a city taxi driver.

We've made tremendous strides and changes in the City of New York since 1994.

I don't think the Port Authority does a good enough job in anything that they do, quite honestly, but clearly in the area of security. Those cops get paid more than N.Y.P.D. cops, and quite honestly - I know I'm going to get into trouble for saying this - they're nothing more than mall cops.

I was involved in some of the very first meetings that created the maps that showed what would happen if you had a Category 1, 2 or 3 hurricane in New York.

My earliest memories are of my father explaining to me the American Dream and how he expected me to do better than he did.