Jack Kemp Quotes

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

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

— Jack Kemp

Democracy without morality is impossible.

— 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

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

“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

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

“I never met a poor person who wanted to soak the rich; they want to get rich.”

— Jack Kemp

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

— 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

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

— 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

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— 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

“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

The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo.

— Jack Kemp

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

— 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 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

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

— Jack Kemp

“I can't hide my feelings.”

— Jack Kemp

“I don't use labels a lot.”

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— Jack Kemp

“It's nice to be needed.”

— Jack Kemp

“Its no secret that I've never liked tax credits.”

— 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

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

— Jack Kemp

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

— 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

“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

“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

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

— 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

“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

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

— 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

“You cannot create employees without first creating employers.”

— Jack Kemp

“The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism. They're soft on Democracy.”

— 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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

— Jack Kemp