Eliot Spitzer Quotes

A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Why does it have to be politics? Is there a dynamism to that world and a theoretical capacity to do things that draws many talented people? Absolutely. Are there other ways to be involved and lead an interesting life? Of course.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Yes, people pull the trigger - but guns are the instrument of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror.

- Eliot Spitzer

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Delay is the enemy of progress.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Let's create a regime that makes sale of bullets to anybody not licensed to carry a gun illegal, makes resale illegal, micro-stamps bullets so they can be traced. No Second Amendment issues here. This would have a remarkable impact on both violence and the capacity to solve shooting crimes.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Some say that I should settle down, go slower and not push so hard, so quickly for such transformational change. To them, I say that you misunderstand the size of the problems we face, the strength of the status quo and the urgency of the people's desire for change.

- Eliot Spitzer

Technology is neutral: It convicts and finds innocents. We must make it a regularized part of the system, giving defendants access to DNA testing and evidence whenever it might be relevant.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

Every trial lawyer knows what it is like to sit patiently while the other side puts on its case. Inevitably they make a few points that appeal to the jury, and waiting for the opportunity to respond can be painful. The desire to jump up immediately - to point out the flaws in logic or the factual distortions - is often overpowering.

- Eliot Spitzer

I stand before you today because this vision of government as the engine of opportunity is what I believe in.

- Eliot Spitzer

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

The wise decision by President Obama to grant some undocumented immigrants the right to remain in the United States for two years without the threat of deportation is already benefitting the country.

- Eliot Spitzer

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

- Eliot Spitzer

When the United States was founded, the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships, monarchies, and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

In 2007, when I was governor of New York, I proposed that our state once again permit undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver's license. To say the proposal lit a firestorm in the political arena is an understatement.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

Mitt Romney's primary season embrace of the social and economic agenda of the more rabid elements of his party doomed him, especially the shrill immigration rhetoric and the harshly insensitive theory that no additional sacrifice or contribution should be sought from those at the top.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

In nations where the voices of intolerance are most visible and momentarily powerful, it is in our long run interests to remain firm in our clear articulation that the use of violence in response to speech is to be condemned.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.'

- Eliot Spitzer

I love and always have loved policy issues and trying to have an impact on the issues that are out there. I cherish my years in government. I have loved my participation at CNN, at Current; writing; teaching. Where I will go next, I will have to sort out.

- Eliot Spitzer

For me, journalism has been more a matter of projecting a particular approach to covering policies, to covering issues. It was a continuation of what I tried to do in government.

- Eliot Spitzer

To survive, the GOP needs to invite people in, not shut them out.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

The reality of split government puts a premium on creativity within the administration. President Obama needs to put the right people in charge of the agencies and then have them push the bounds of administrative power to change policy through those agencies. President Obama has a pretty good track record of this.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

I view Al Jazeera as a very serious journalistic outfit. They have proven to observers around the world that they are serious and objective. They will have to, at a P.R. level, prove to the American public that that is the case. And I think that over time they will succeed at doing that.

- Eliot Spitzer

I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

As someone with a deep faith in competition and the market, I also know that markets only work with tough enforcement of the rules that guarantee competition and fair play - and that the pressure to break those rules only gets stronger as the amount of money involved gets larger.

- Eliot Spitzer

The Chautauqua Institution is truly a national treasure. It is a place for contemplation and a place for reflection, a place where platitudes and slogans can be set aside and be replaced by thoughtfulness and introspection.

- Eliot Spitzer

I don't care about motivation. I care about credibility.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

I don't like politicians who vacillate.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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.

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

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

- Eliot Spitzer

While 2013 will not see a major national election, we can be sure that most Republicans will obstruct and some Democrats will appease.

- Eliot Spitzer

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

- Eliot Spitzer

Public speaking? I speak to myself on the street!

- Eliot Spitzer

In politics you learn to always smile.

- Eliot Spitzer