Rudy Giuliani Quotes
Former Mayor of New York City
Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
Civilization must stand up and combat the current collapse of governance, the rise of violence, and the spread of chaos and fear in many parts of the world.
There are terrible, terrible memories of September 11th, things that I saw, people that I lost, the devastation, the identification of bodies. I mean, all these memories come back to you at different times. And then the other side of it this tremendous response with the firefighters and the police officers saving people, the rescue workers.
The most important lesson my dad taught me was how to manage fear. Early on, he taught me that in a time of emergency, you've got to become deliberately calm.
My father taught me, in boxing, that when you - particularly when you get hit in the face for the first time - you're going to panic. That instead of panicking, just accept it. Stay calm. And any time anybody hits you, they always leave themselves open to be hit.
Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.
The lesson of 9/11 is that America is truly exceptional. We withstood the worst attack of our history, intended by our enemies to destroy us. Instead, it drew us closer and made us more united. Our love for freedom and one another has given us a strength that surprised even ourselves.
With the spirit of my administration, New York City is poised for dramatic change. The era of fear has had a long enough reign.
There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.
The United States is paradise compared to China, Russia, Ecuador and Cuba, with regard to the press. And with regard to secrecy and transparency.
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.
Revenge is not a noble sentiment, but it is a human one.
One of the lessons from Sept. 11 is that America requires a long-term presence in those parts of the world that endanger us. This notion has become controversial, but frankly, the need could not be clearer.
You never begin a new life. It's a mistake to think that you end one part of your life and start another as if there's no continuity.
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.
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.
We must not be afraid to define our enemy. It is Islamic extremist terrorism. I did not say all of Islam. I said Islamic extremist terrorism. Failing to identify them properly maligns decent Muslims around the world. It also sets up a fear of being politically incorrect that can have serious consequences. And it has.
Courage is managing fear to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And it's a great demonstration of love. It's really what love is. It's finding areas in which other people are more important than you.
There is no city in America that has reduced crime as much as we have in the last three years. This is not the product of accident. This is the product of design.
I don't invest in the stock market. I did it a long, long time ago when I was really young, and I got involved in all the investigations and all the prosecutions, and I felt it was better if I didn't make individual investments. So I'm invested in funds, but not in individual - not in individual stocks.
Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.
When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded.
I was very serious about being a priest, twice in my life. Almost joined the Montfort Seminary after I graduated from high school. Almost went back in the seminary during college.
The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. The danger is another black.
The only time the private parts of someone's life are relevant is when they're affecting public performance. And just because someone is a public person doesn't mean that any part of his or her private life is open to scrutiny. If someone is doing his or her job, you have to have enough empathy to understand that we all have personal problems.
I've probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in New York City with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years.
It's about time law enforcement got as organized as organized crime.
Putting pressure on grand juries to indict in my view is un-American. A grand jury should be allowed to be fair and impartial. They shouldn't have people yelling and screaming.
I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas.
In choosing a president, we really don't choose a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or liberal. We choose a leader.
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.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that America has made - and maybe the world because this is, sort of, the core of communism and socialism - is that you can have perfect solutions to social problems like poverty, like crime. You're not going to eliminate all crime. Maybe you'll never eliminate all poverty.
I'll tell you what makes me feel worthwhile: organizing and solving other people's problems. It makes me feel good to go to Mexico City and figure out theories on how you can reorganize and reduce crime. To me, it's one of the more fulfilling ways to spend a day.
When you confront a problem you begin to solve it.
The use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be very provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power.
Our safety requires a long-term military presence in the Middle East because that's where the plans to attack us are emanating.
You never agree with any one candidate 100 percent. I don't agree with myself 100 percent.
To defeat Islamic extremist terrorism, we must put them on defense. If they are at war against us - which they have declared - we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them.
There is no more time for us left to revive our great country. No more time to repeat our mistakes of the past. Washington needs a complete turnaround, and Donald Trump is the agent of change, and he will be the leader of the change we need.
Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.
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.
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.
Blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society. If I had put all of my police officers on Park Avenue and none in Harlem, thousands and thousands more blacks would've been killed during the eight years that I was mayor.
When I said the city would be stronger, I didn't know that. I just hoped it. There are parts of you that say, 'Maybe we're not going to get through this.' You don't listen to them.
We don't have real control over death. You could die of a heart attack, a building could fall on you, you could be in an accident, you could have a fatal disease. So, how should you conduct your life? You just go ahead and live, taking reasonable precautions - like handling the mail more carefully.
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 pretty successful before Sept. 11 and fully expected that when I left being mayor I would be very successful.
So I think we're, we're, we're as broad a political party, if not broader than the Democratic Party, just in a different political spectrum.
Republicans spend too much time on defense. We have to be on offense. We have to point out the truth. President Obama stole seven hundred million dollars from Medicare. Republicans want to preserve Medicare. Obamacare robs from Medicare.
In an emergency, you rarely get one consistent piece of advice. You usually have two or three people with two or three different ideas. So you want to have your own set of thoughts.
I think to adequately manage a crisis, you have to see it. Because there's only so much somebody else can tell you about it, and they impose their own distortions on the description. You need to see it yourself.
The Republican Party is a much bigger tent than people give it credit for. We have a lot of what I guess you all call moderate Republicans.
In choosing Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has chosen for the future.
What we can borrow from Ronald Reagan... is that great sense of optimism. He led by building on the strengths of America, not running America down.
St. Paul's Chapel stands - without so much as a broken window. Little miracle.
America needs to be defended. We need missile defense to better police the skies over the United States.
Now we understand much more clearly. why people from all over the world want to come to New York and to America. It's called freedom.
I was a Yankee fan in Brooklyn because my father was a Yankee fan. And my father was required to live in Brooklyn with my mother's family, who were all Dodger fans. So he was surrounded by Dodger fans. He was a Yankee fan. So his revenge was to make me a Yankee fan.
I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.
When you're in a crisis of, you know, tremendous proportions, it's beyond any human capability to control, you just make the best decisions you can, and you just hope that your intuition is correct.
I am open and will continue to be open to ways to limit abortion. What I am not open to is to removing the right.
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.
I can't be the Mayor of L.A. I hate the Dodgers. I'm a Yankee fan. Yankee fans can't ever root for the Dodgers.
We need to know who's in the United States. We need to know everyone who's in the United States that comes in here from a foreign country. And we have to separate the ones who are dangerous from the ones who aren't. To accomplish that, we need a fence. We need a technological fence. We need a border patrol.
I get through difficult situations by looking at how other people have gone through them. I say to myself, 'If they can go through it, then I can.' Or, If they can go through worse, I can go through whatever I'm going through.
We should be tolerant, fair, open, and we should understand the rights that all people have in our society.
You've got to be who you are. You've got to be honest with people. If your views change on something, you've got to be willing to express it.
I was Mayor of New York during a great Yankees dynasty. I got to preside over the city during four Yankees championships.
My attempt is to try to broaden the base of the Republican Party, to try to bring in people that can agree and that can disagree on that, because I think the issues that we face about terrorism, about our economy, about the growth of our economy are so important that we have to have the biggest outreach possible.
As mayor, I used to always feel the important thing is that people respect me, not love me - but it is really much nicer when they love you, too. I'm going to try to keep it that way.
My view of Sarah Palin is she is the most dynamic figure maybe in politics, even more in some ways than President Obama, who is a little more scripted than she is. He is great with the teleprompter.
The worst situation with radiation escaping is if you are downwind from it. You could virtually be on one side and not affected by the radiation. If you're on the other side and you're downwind from it, you are going to be affected.
There is a reality to the primary process, and you don't win primaries by being ahead in national polls. You win them by winning Iowa, by winning New Hampshire, by winning South Carolina, winning Florida.
Bonuses balance my budget in New York City. The bigger the bonuses on Wall Street, the more money I had to spend on poor people. The New York City budget is determined greatly by the bonuses given on Wall Street.
What did Sept. 11 do? It took me from 60-70 percent name recognition as mayor of New York to about 90 percent. Of course it had an impact. But it's not the only reason I was successful.
I'm not sure if President Obama is an ideologue or a pragmatist. I am hoping and praying he's a pragmatist.
I think the world is much better off without Saddam Hussein than with him.
We have too many politicians who are poll-driven to excess. Polls are important. You've got to know what the public is thinking, but you can't let them drive you completely.
I am a free market Republican. I am against subsidies, in most cases.
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.
You know Donald Trump will secure our borders.
The rule is, you can protest all you want. Make all the noise you want. Carry all the signs you want. The minute you throw a rock, you get arrested. The minute you break a window, you get arrested. The minute you break into a store, you get arrested.
I have known Donald Trump for almost 30 years. And he has created and accomplished great things. But beyond that, this is a man with a big heart.
Donald Trump is a leader. He will reassert America's position as the nation with the best values to lead the world.
Donald Trump will make sure that any agreement with Iran meets the original goals of the U.N and our allies: a non-nuclear Iran.
It's time to make America safe again. It's time to make America one again. I know it can be done because I did it by changing New York City from 'the crime capital of America' to - according to the FBI - the safest large city in America. What I did for New York City, Donald Trump will do for America.
Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help. And he did it anonymously.
Schools exist in America and have always existed to train responsible citizens of the United States of America. If they don't do that, it's very hard to hold us together as a country, because it's shared values that hold us together.
As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word 'values.' We talk about teaching ethics in schools - people say, 'What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't.' And they confuse that with teaching of religion.