Newt Gingrich Quotes

As we enter into the 110th Congress, it is imperative that we address ethics reforms needed to make this institution run correctly.

I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better.

[On congressional reform:] If you purify the pond, the water lilies die.

What Congress needs is a trochar.

Self-government won't work without self-discipline.

If congress refuses to obey its own rules. If congress refuses to pass a balanced budget. If congress refuses to read the Bills. Then I say, sweep the place clean, limit their terms, and send them HOME!

The disciplined are free.

Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.

How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?

I've learned over the years that freedom is just the other side of discipline.

But in this Congress, accountability is just a catch phrase, usually directed elsewhere. Demands to personal responsibility or corporate accountability abound, but rarely congressional accountability or fiscal responsibility.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.

There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.

I don't have a lot of discipline.

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

The surest test of discipline is its absence.

It's absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Discipline yourself, and others won't need to.

The Congressional Ethics Committees are the brothers and sisters of member of Congress and no one wants to investigate their brothers and sisters.

The Senate must stop doing so much of its business in secret, behind closed doors…. A bill that affects the nation’s security has been held up for months by a secret hold and cannot see the light of day…. There is no accountability…. The person who exercises a hold ought to be identified…. Secret holds have been the bane of the United States Senate for decades. So much for sunshine in the United States Senate.

We need citizens willing to make Congress accountable for the travesty which passes for government today.

Quite as important as legislation is vigilant oversight of administration; and even more important than legislation is the instruction and guidance in political affairs which the people might receive from a body which kept all national concerns suffused in a broad daylight of discussion .... The informing functions of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function. The argument is not only that a discussed and interrogated administration is the only pure and efficient administration, but, more than that, that the only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration.

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?