Eliot Spitzer Quotes

The big lie out there, the big lie that the Republicans propagate day after day, is that cutting marginal rates for those at the top is going to create jobs. It's simply not true.

Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook our nation to the core. Americans were deeply frightened, sad, and angry, and they rallied around a President who, at the time, showed impressive certitude and calm.

A significant piece of the wealth that the NFL owners garner is a result of the enormous TV revenues they get - and those revenues are supported by a legislatively granted exemption from the antitrust laws that has been made applicable to sports leagues, primarily the NFL.

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

We are all used to paying a sales tax when we buy things - almost 9 percent here in New York City. The application of this concept to the financial sector could solve our need for revenue, bring some sanity back into the financial sector, and give us a way to raise the revenue we need to run the government in a fiscally responsible way.

Sometimes in politics, you think you've seen it all. Turns out I was wrong.

Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our financial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.

Any reasonable economist will tell you that it's nearly impossible to isolate the impact of right-to-work laws on a state's job growth. A multitude of other factors intervene. However, one thing the numbers can show is that right-to-work laws have a negative effect on the wages of workers in that state.

It sucks. I used to be governor of New York.

I would say to those who don't like the metaphor This is reality.

Tax rates for the wealthy should revert to Clinton-era levels, both because it is necessary for long-term deficit reduction and because fairness dictates it. Moreover, there is no proof that higher marginal rates dissuade investment, all the rhetoric from the Right notwithstanding.

Once again, the puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn't recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian 'JOBS Act' - a bill that should in fact be called the 'Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.'

I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.

I don't like politicians who vacillate.

I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.

It's not Big Brother that we now have to be afraid of, but Big Browser.

The irony is that it was tougher to rent a car from Cerberus when it owned Alamo than to buy a semi-automatic. To rent a car, one had to provide ID, a drivers' license, and get insurance coverage. To buy a gun? Cash and carry, from the back of a station wagon at a gun show. No concerns about downstream liability or risk.

The world has conducted a massive macro-economic experiment since the cataclysm of 2008. In Europe, the fans of austerity have had their chance, and the results have been a disaster.

I have long said there are three distinct groups under the GOP's tent: theological warriors, who want to impose their social views on the rest of society; Tea Party zealots, who say with a straight face that they want the government to get out of their Medicare; and remnants of the pro-business moderates.

Those who are critical of Alliance are the same people who have done nothing for 30 years.

Virtually everywhere in the world, people still wake up and want their country to be more like the United States than any other nation. We are the envy of the world because of what we stand for and how our democratic process, flawed as it may often seem to be, operates. We should take pride in that.

The Occupy movement needs an organizing principle, and - just as the Tea Party did - it needs some actual measures of success. Choose one candidate whose agenda is squarely within that of the movement and make his or her electoral success a focal point.

From those to whom much is given, much is expected. I have been given much: the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York, and the chance to lead this state. I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me.

In the melting pot that is America, inclusive trumps exclusive. Whether it's single women, young adults, or minorities, alienating the rapidly growing voting blocs is not smart politics.

President Obama is doing the right thing by offering young immigrants, most often in this country through no action of their own, a chance to live and work openly, free from the fear of deportation.

Imagine if investors in Wal-Mart really cared about bribery at that company's overseas operations or safety standards at its overseas manufacturing plants. If investors pulled their capital, corporate leaders would have to respond.

When you're in office, there are tangible moments when you can see tangible successes.

As one who was a prosecutor for many years, I can tell you that having a tape recording of interrogations would help everybody. It would make clear if there had been improper pressure exerted on a defendant or witness, and it would also protect the interrogating officer from false claims that such pressure had been brought to bear.

After 25-plus years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and defense attorney, I have developed a deep appreciation for both the wisdom of the law and the role that jurists play in framing the rights and responsibilities that define our society.

I think President Obama could have handled politics and policies differently. But he has been decisive, strong, and consistent - important qualities in a president. Mitt Romney is indeed an Etch A Sketch, the antithesis of leadership.

In politics you learn to always smile.

The pace of global warming is accelerating and the scale of the impact is devastating. The time for action is limited - we are approaching a tipping point beyond which the opportunity to reverse the damage of CO2 emissions will disappear.

It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

Companies that pollute should be taxed so that a product's cost to society is reflected in the price of that product.

The Tea Party isolated Mitt Romney from mainstream voters, linking him to a rabid ideology that he could not shake as he desperately tried to move to the middle in the closing weeks of the campaign. Lesson: The loudest voices don't often command the votes needed to win in November.

I don't have any particular expertise-I've never been a banker or an investment banker. But I did see an evolution in the system that I thought was problematic.

While their fiscal views aren't mine, the moderates are the last reasonable voice in the current Republican Party.

Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.

My career was obviously cut shorter than I wanted it to be.

I don't think Michael Bloomberg would say that his greatest skill is delivering the speech. He would say he's more of a nuts-and-bolts mayor-picking up the trash, dealing with the school system.

To every New Yorker - and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for - I sincerely apologize.

I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.

Jimmy Carter laid out policies that we now look back at and say, 'Gee, that actually made sense.' But you also need to explain it and convey and communicate in a way that provides that tableau, that understanding.

Health care reform, the marquee legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration's first term, was passed before we entered the world of divided government.

Public speaking? I speak to myself on the street!

Delay is the enemy of progress.