Jack Kemp Quotes

I believe in individual freedom, equal opportunity at the starting line without a preordained order of finish.

The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action.

I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity?

I don't know what this definition of affirmative action is for some.

If giving points to some students to achieve greater diversity is a quota system in violation of the Constitution, how can the awarding of points to the children of a less diverse alumni be upheld?

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.

I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible.

Racial preferences are dead. All that is required now is to give them a decent and honorable burial.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Without affirmative action I could never have attended Yale University. Without affirmative action Barack Obama would never have gotten into Colombia and Harvard Law school

Government service in all its branches, state and federal, would have to be thrown open to all on the basis solely of merit, and promotions made accordingly. It would probably be necessary to have drastic laws against manifestations of color prejudice and discrimination, just as we have legislated against kidnapping, arson and murder which are certainly no more serious from the viewpoint of national welfare.

If affirmative action is quotas, then I am not for it. If it means equal opportunity, then I say support that. But to ask for special treatment because of race, that bothers me...