Ed Koch Quotes

It's better to have the taxpayer pay for the losses than have the United States of America become an economic wasteland. If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

My job is to rectify the public finances and hand the country back to the people so they can really have a future, and that is what I will do.

Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision.

Restoring responsibility and accountability is essential to the economic and fiscal health of our nation.

We believe that it is very important that we have hopefully averted what would have been the most substantial headwind of all, which is a default for the first time in our history, and that that will contribute to a more positive environment that we hope will allow for greater growth and job creation.

If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind... by going first, we can become first.

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity - and I know we can do this.

Rudy Giuliani did some phenomenal things in the city if you think of the transformation of the city and the quality of life.

A clear lesson of history is that a 'sine qua non' for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

When I took over, the economy had almost collapsed. I told Malawians we needed to pass through difficult times. Two days ago I even cut my own salary by 30% to show we are making sacrifices.

I have done everything I can to move Britain out of the financial danger zone.

We as voters, have long hoped that we would get a businessman instead of a politician in order to help fix America's problems. Well, I am that businessman.

People rightly want our political leaders - on all sides - to concentrate on minimising the damage to jobs, living standards and our savings from the banking crisis.

Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.

Every city is either vibrant these days or is working on a plan to attain vibrancy soon. The reason is simple: a city isn't successful - isn't even a city, really - unless it can lay claim to being 'vibrant.'

Historians will likely give Obama credit for steering the country away from the brink of economic collapse in 2009.

Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.

I think achieving a higher fiscal stability is also a very important condition for restoring an environment which is conducive to growth.

I think it's absolutely clear that the fiscal path we are on is not sustainable, and for me, the best analogy is these deficits are like a cancer, and over time they will destroy the country from within.

Democrats are going to proudly run on the fact that we turned the economy around. It was our policies under President Obama's leadership through the Recovery Act, through investing in the automobile industry.

I'm not interested in being Don Quixote. I'm interested in running the City of New York.

I know where I'm going and I have told the French. I am sure if hope is there, we will be able to put France back on its feet... to live better in five years than we do today.

My background in financial services and my experience as a state representative have given me the ability to identify our country's fiscal problems and find steps to remedy them.

We cannot continue our leadership in the world as the largest debtor nation the world has ever known.

Our national leaders could learn some good habits and important lessons from city hall to take the place of the various gimmicks being used in Washington to duck federal budget responsibility.