Rudy Giuliani Quotes & Sayings (Page 6)

“When I became mayor of New York City, I had a $2.4 billion deficit. And everybody wanted me to raise taxes. I said, 'If I raise taxes, I'll drive people out of New York City, and then I'll be raising taxes again.' So what I did was I cut expenses by 15 percent.”

“When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.”

“The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. The danger is another black.”

“On September 11, 2001, we thought we were going to be attacked many, many times between then and now. We haven't been. I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time... to put us on offense against terrorists.”

“When we faced a possibility here in New York of chemical and biological attack, three days after September 11, I called in all of the experts, academic experts, Nobel Prize laureates, and doctors who had dealt with anthrax, doctors who had dealt with various forms of chemical and biological attack.”

“I was the person, I think ,who first said the evening of September 11 that we shouldn't hold this against the Arab community, the Muslim community. We should focus on the individuals and that groups that were involved and not participate in group blame.”

“The reality is even if you are a hands-on Mayor or Governor or chief executive, at best, you must know about 10 or 20% of what's going on. Otherwise, you never get through the day... I was very hands on, and there's lots of stuff I didn't know, and lots of things that either went wrong or right that I would find out about afterwards.”

“You have to keep a strong sense of who you really are - and I have a pretty strong sense of myself. It gets me in trouble when I say this, but I don't think of myself as a politician. I've always tried to be honest when communicating with people.”

“In the 9/11 Commission Report, one of the things they point out is that firefighters saved just about everybody below the fire. I don't think they realize how proud the fire department is of that. Because, conceivably, that's all they could have done. They could not have gotten above that fire.”

“Liberty is ceding a certain amount of your ability to do what you want so that everybody else can live in peace and freedom and respecting the rights of other people.”