Newt Gingrich in Quotations from Speaker Newt Gingrich
On Civil Rights:
GOP can no longer be the party of the country club
Even though he first ran for Congress in a district by one-time segregationist George Wallace in an unsuccessful presidential quest, Gingrich has generally refrained from using racial issues to his advantage.
While some of his comments about welfare state victims are tinged with racial undertones, most of the time he sincerely emphasizes the need to recognize that America is a multiethnic and multicultural society.
He argues that the GOP can no longer afford to be "the party of the country clubs" and instead has to evolve into a party "that cares enough about the poor to actually help them,
rather than a party that cares just enough about them to exploit them.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 36-7
Jan 1, 1995
On Civil Rights:
Equality of opportunity, not equality of result
Americans have historically preferred to focus on equality of opportunity, not equality of result. Americans have no interest in saying, "Every quarterback should be treated as if they're Joe Montana." Americans have every interest in saying, "Everybody
should be allowed to try out for the team." Americans declare themselves prepared to countenance very substantial economic inequalities, while insisting on the importance of the ideal of equal opportunities.
--Renewing American Civilization, Class 6
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.117
Jan 1, 1995
On Civil Rights:
Affirmative opportunity instead of affirmative action
A decade of affirmative action has produced office after office in which people have their jobs because of quotas rather than competence.
--Newt's book, "Window of Opportunity"Conservative Republicans are. explicitly for integration and civil
rights for everyone--but civil rights based on individual characteristics, not genetic code.
--Policy Review. Window 1991
We believe in affirmative opportunities for those from a culture of poverty or in genuine economic need.
However, helping a millionaire's son or daughter because they fit the right quota, while denying the child of a low-income worker because they are in the wrong quota, is simply wrong.
We also believe that any efforts to set up group politics based on quotas and set-asides is inherently destructive of that ideal.
--Congressional Record. January 30, 1992
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.127-8
Jan 1, 1995
On Crime:
Lock up violent criminals until they're too old for violence
Crime is not a hard problem. We simply lock up violent criminals until they're too old to be violent.
That means fewer welfare workers and more police officers and prosecutors and prisons.
--"The Life of the Party," Policy Review. Winter 1990
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.125
Jan 1, 1995
On Drugs:
I used marijuana at a party once; it had no effect
The historical record is that 19 years ago, I used marijuana once at a party. in New Orleans. It didn't have any effect on me.
As a matter of fact, I never went back and revisited it.
--The Washington Post, November 8, 1987
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 11
Jan 1, 1995
On Drugs:
Permissive attitudes lead to considering legalizing drugs
Look at the preachments of the Surgeon General [Joycelyn Elders] and ask yourself how could a President have a surgeon general who has suggested we consider legalizing drugs, who said at one point that she didn't see that selling cocaine was
necessarily an illegal act, who has basically taken positions that are not just anti- Catholic but they, in effect, represent an attitude towards permissive sexuality that by any reasonable standard in a middle-class sense
is destructive, and ask yourself why does the President keep her? I assume he shares her values. I assume he thinks it's okay.
--Elders was fired by President Clinton a few days later when comments she made at a UN conference about masturbation were about to be reported. Meet the Press, December 4, 1994
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 90
Jan 1, 1995
On Education:
Make universities about Western values, not quaint artifacts
Either we recapture universities for Western values and make them once again useful, or they will become what English universities once were--quaint artifacts where youths go to listen to weird people tell them bizarre things, none of which are real.
I hope the next three Democratic presidential campaigns are run by people conversant with the Kennedy School.
Only the Stanford Faculty have been more aggressive in trying to prove they can be more out of touch with the American people than the Kennedy School.
Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler would have admired some of the elite campuses where certain words can get a student expelled.
--The Boston Globe. August 11, 1991
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 59
Jan 1, 1995
On Education:
Voluntary school prayer really does matter
I had a very bright student in the class who said, "Well, do you really think voluntary school prayer matters that much?"
And I suddenly realized that I really did think it mattered that much, that I think we are crazy to have driven it out.
--Renewing American Civilization, Class 2
Our liberal national elite doesn't believe in religion.
--Mother Jones 1984
For a generation, the values which were written into the Declaration of Independence. have been eroding; we have carried money saying "In God
We Trust," while politicians and the ACLU have driven God out of our public life and institutions.
--Newt's book, "Window of Opportunity"
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 62
Jan 1, 1995
On Families & Children:
It's conceivable I was insensitive during my divorce
One of the reasons I ended up getting a divorce [from Jackie] was that if I was disintegrating enough as a person that I could not say [things in public that were consistent with my private life], then I needed to get my life straight, not quit
saying them.
--Mother Jones, November 1984All I can say is when you've been talking about divorce for 11 years and you've gone to a marriage counselor, and the other person doesn't want the divorce,
I'm not sure there is any sensitive way to handle it.
--The Washington Post, January 3, 1985
I'm willing to say, having one through the last five and six years and having understood that--as an incorrigible bulldozer--
it's conceivable I was that insensitive. It was never in any sense deliberate.
--Commenting on the story that he asked for a divorce while Jackie was in the hospital recovering from a cancer operation, The Washington Post, June 12, 1989
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 14-5
Jan 1, 1995
On Families & Children:
Welfare system destroys the family; replace welfare state
The American people have every right politically to have a revolution. Our revolution ought to be at the ballot box. I believe that revolution is necessary. I can't imagine America being successful and safe and prosperous in the
21st century if you have schools that don't teach, a welfare system that destroys the family, a drug culture, and all the things we currently have.So if you don't have a revolution, you're going to have a country which is decaying.
And I think our goal is very simple. It is our goal to replace the welfare state. Not to reform it, not to improve it, not to modify it, to replace it. To go straight at the core structure and the core values of the welfare state,
and replace them with a much more powerful, much more effective system.
--Remarks at the Young Republicans Leadership Conference, Washington D.C. March 19, 1992
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 28
Jan 1, 1995
On Families & Children:
Families are not anything other than heterosexual couples
I think that on most things most days, the vast majority of practicing homosexuals are good citizens. So why would you say that of all the different groups you can pick on, this is the one group that you are going to single out?
[The Republican Party's position] should be toleration. It should not be promotion and it should not be condemnation.
I don't want to see police in the men's room, which we had when I was a child, and I don't want to see trying to educate kindergartners in understanding gay couples.
It is madness to pretend that families are anything other than heterosexual couples. I think it goes to the core of how civilization functions.
--The Washington Blade. November 25, 1994
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.129
Jan 1, 1995
On Foreign Policy:
Threats to civilization are real, & fight needs leadership
Visiting Verdun literally changed my life. I came to the conclusion. that threats to civilization are real, that the quality of leadership is a major factor in whether civilization survives. So I sort of changed my goal from zoo director or vertebrate
paleontologist to being a leader. My father was a solider then, and the house we lived in was right across from the Seventh Army Headquarters. Late at night he would get a call, and in the early morning hours the entire headquarters would move into the
field. I could see it all from my bedroom window--tanks, trucks, armed personnel carriers. It gradually dawned on me that this wasn't a game. In a sense, my mother, my sisters, and I were being held hostage to world power. Faced with this, I began to
wonder what it was all about, why my father was risking his life, why my country was in danger.
-- Recalling at age 14 on the army base in Stuttgart, West Germany. Campaign Profile (Ingram Library, West Georgia College) 1976
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 7-8
Jan 1, 1995
On Free Trade:
Supported NAFTA & GATT in common with Clinton administration
Gingrich's recent enthusiasms have been more down-to-earth: new information technologies and the rise of global markets are the powerful forces transforming our society. Gingrich was stalwart in his support of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) as well as the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), although in both cases it meant making common cause with the Clinton administration and many Democrats.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 93
Jan 1, 1995
On Free Trade:
Compete in world market because we can't retreat from it
We need to create local jobs here through sales worldwide. So we have to be productive enough, creative enough, interesting enough that people all over the planet like it.
--Renewing American Civilization, Class 1We are much better off to have
more IBMs and more AT&T's that are able to be everywhere. And we're much better off to have thousands of new, small businesses that compete everywhere a jet airplane goes, and anywhere a fax machine can receive their latest ad.
--L.A.Times, June 17,
1990
We must learn to compete in the world market because we cannot retreat from it. The greatest productivity and the greatest take-home pay are all going to be found by competing in the world market. To retreat from competition is to accept decay.
We must be tougher in negotiating with our trading partners, but our goal should be to increase American exports and to create American jobs, not to decrease imports and kill foreign jobs.
--Congressional Record, January 30, 1992
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.104-5
Jan 1, 1995
On Government Reform:
Americans want public officials to live a Christian life
My wife, Jackie, and I have spent a number of years working with young people both through my profession as a teacher and once again as we both teach at our Church's Sunday School.
These years have taught us the importance of setting an example in all the things that we might do or attempt to do, an example that would help our young people believe in the Georgia virtues of honesty, sincerity and integrity.
I don't think it is asking too much when the American people want their public officials to practice those virtues and to live a Christian life.
--Gingrich "Congressgram," issued during his second unsuccessful election campaign (Ingram Library, West Georgia College) Spring 1976
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 13
Jan 1, 1995
On Government Reform:
I believe in lean bureaucracy, not in no bureaucracy
I believe in lean bureaucracy, not in no bureaucracy. You can have an active, aggressive, conservative state which does not in fact have a large centralized bureaucracy. This goes back to Teddy Roosevelt. We have not seen an activist conservative
presidency since TR.
--Mother Jones , November 1984You can walk into a Wal-Mart store today and have your credit card approved in 2.3 seconds. And yet it takes the Veterans Department six weeks to answer your letter.
We Republicans see the efficiency of Wal-Mart and of UPS; we want to change government to be as courteous, efficient, speedy, and effective as those companies. The Democrats see those companies, and they want to apply
litigation, regulation, and taxation to make sure the companies become more like government.
--Speech, Republican National Convention in Houston. August 18, 1992
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 72-3
Jan 1, 1995
On Health Care:
Replace expensive, red-tape-ridden, litigious system
Replacing welfare with workfare and ending a process by which teenage mothers have children outside marriage with ignorant, irresponsible male children who have sex but are not the fathers would be a revolution.
Having schools that are disciplined, require homework and beat the Japanese in math and science would be a revolution.
Replacing the most expensive, red-tape-hidden litigious health care system in the world with a revitalized, health-oriented private system we can afford, and that would be available to everyone, would be a revolution.
Having government bureaucracies that are lean, efficient, courteous, and customer-service-oriented would be a revolution.
--Congressional Record January 3,1992.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 29
Jan 1, 1995
On Health Care:
Socialized medicine designed to seize control of system
It is astonishing to me--in this era of widespread and well-deserved disillusionment with big government--that so many well-informed, concerned citizens would want to nationalize and bureaucratize American medicine.
We only need to look at the postal and public school systems to learn that nationalization means neither efficiency nor economy and at the telephone system to learn that private monopolies also have their flaws.
--Unidentified newspaper article in Ingram Library, West Georgia College, 1974There has been a 50-year-long war between the Left, which loves socialized medicine, loves coercive centralized bureaucratic power. and the rest of us.
And they're very smart. They always conceal their greed for power in the language of love.
--Mother Jones. October 1989
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.138-9
Jan 1, 1995
On Jobs:
Welfare attacks work & encourages getting out of work
The traditional emphasis on work is under severe attack. The most obvious examples are the dropouts, the hippies, the people who use loopholes in the welfare system to draw unjustified benefits. However these often discussed (& attacked) examples are
just the tip of the iceberg.The real effort to get out of work in this century involves the average American. There has been constant pressure for shorter work weeks, larger vacations and earlier retirement.
--The Georgian (Carrollton, Mar.18, 1976
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 34
Jan 1, 1995
On Jobs:
Lower lifetime earning level if you go to Job Corps
More young people get more entry-level training in McDonald's than anywhere else. The tragedy of the welfare state is that its answer to McDonald's is to raise taxes and transfer the money to a
Job Corps bureaucracy--even though recent studies have shown you will have a lower lifetime earning level if you go to the Job Corps than if you avoid it.
--Readings in Renewing American Civilization
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.121-2
Jan 1, 1995
On Principles & Values:
As an army brat, I know how exciting military life can be
Having been an army brat, I know how exciting military life can be. -"News from Congressman Newt Gingrich", Oct. 2, 1982There is a part of me that has been lonely for large parts of my life.
You'd move every 18 months and so would your best friend, so you would have that churning.--Commenting on life as an army brat, The Washington Post, June 12, 1989.
I read part of the book [the Great Santini, a Pat Conroy novel about a son's attempts to please his military father] and I couldn't finish it.
It was too frightening. -- The Washington Post, June 12, 1989.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 5-6
Jan 1, 1995
On Principles & Values:
Grew up on military bases during Vietnam War
Contemporary American leaders--among them Bill Clinton, just three years Gingrich's junior--found their faith in America's goodness undermined by the civil rights struggle and the Vietnam war.
Not Gingrich. The stepson of an army sergeant, he grew up on military bases, the most American of environments overseas as well as at home.
He was largely insulated from the civil rights struggle--the military was and is the integrated part of American society. When the Vietnam war was raging,
Gingrich, as the married father of two children, was eligible for a deferment from the draft. Unlike Clinton, he never had to worry about facing a draft board.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. vi
Jan 1, 1995
On Principles & Values:
Mother married to biological father for only 3 days
1943- Born June 17 to Newton Leroy Robert McPherson and Kathleen Daugherty McPherson in Harrisburg, Pa. According to his mother's account, the marriage lasted three days: "We were married on a Saturday and
I left him on a Tuesday. I got Newtie in those three days."1946- Kathleen marries army Lt. Col. Robert Bruce Gingrich, who adopts Newt.
("Newtie is a talker; Bob is not," Kathleen said recently, recalling the relationship between her son and his stepfather.)
Newt attends army base schools in Kansas and, during his father's tours of duty abroad, in Orleans, France, and Stuttgart, West Germany.
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. xv
Jan 1, 1995
On Principles & Values:
Great Republican tradition of progressivism from 1856-1912
For the last 50 years the Republican Party has been hypnotized by Franklin Roosevelt and its entire vision has been to stop what he began.
--As quoted in "Changing of the Guard," by David Broder. Simon & Schuster, New York City 1980
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 39-40
Jan 1, 1995
On Principles & Values:
Judeo-Christian traditions and rules work
We have six thousand years of written historical experience in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We know that rules work. We know that learning, studying, working, saving and commitment are vital.
That is why Republicans would replace welfare with work, that is why Republicans would cut taxes to favor families and to encourage work, saving and job creation.
As President Reagan said, we are more concerned with your destination that your origin. But the Democrats want to force individuals into groups, establish quotas and limit our future based on your genetic past.
--Speech to the Republican National Convention. August 19, 1992
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.116
Jan 1, 1995
On Social Security:
Change how we pay for retirement but don't abolish system
In no way, under any circumstances, do I talk about abolishing Social Security. I have said it is better for us to pay a tax through a sales tax than through a tax on workers, so that everybody would pay in. (This is) a change in the way you pay for it.
It's not a new tax. It's a replacement of the current anti-labor, anti-work tax.
--Douglas County (Ga.) Sentinel. May 10, 1988Now, let me point out, the one Government program people actually seem to like is Social Security.
This is the one program also, by the way, which has a very tiny bureaucracy. We send out more Social Security checks with fewer civil servants than almost any other program in the Government.
So which program do our friends in the Democratic administration want to hit? Social Security.
--Congressional Record. February 2, 1993
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.134-5
Jan 1, 1995
On Technology:
Space mirrors could uncover criminals lurking in darkness
A mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways. Ambient light covering entire areas could reduce the current danger of criminals lurking in darkness.
--Newt's book "Window of Opportunity"
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.100
Jan 1, 1995
On Technology:
Space exploration solves the world's most pressing problems
1984- Gingrich publishes "Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future," written with Marianne Gingrich and science fiction writer David Drake.
The book, which lays out Gingrich's philosophy, argues, among other things, that space exploration can solve the world's most pressing problems. At the time of publication, Gingrich is chairman of the Congressional Space Caucus.
1989- Gingrich is the subject of a House Ethics Committee probe. The 10- count complaint charged that
Gingrich violated House rules on outside gifts and income by benefiting from two partnerships that helped finance two books--an unfinished novel and "Window of Opportunity."
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A&P Bernstein, p.xviii-xx
Jan 1, 1995
On War & Peace:
LBJ misled the American people about war in Asia
In my lifetime, without question, the President who lied the most and did the most damage to the United States was Lyndon Johnson. It was Johnson who misled the American people about war in Asia.
It was Johnson who designed a disastrous economic policy that fueled the inflation from which we are only now recovering.
It was Johnson's politics of irresponsible promises which led to riots on the campuses and in the cities.
It was Johnson's "Great Society" which is smothering us in red tape, fiscal deficits and massive bureaucracy.
--Speech, "The survival of the Two-Party System" (Ingram Library, West Georgia College) 1976
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p. 82-3
Jan 1, 1995
On War & Peace:
Use air power against every position everywhere
I think the United States should ask General (Colin) Powell. to visit the Bosnian Serb leadership and say to them, "If you launch a general offensive, we should reserve the right to use air power against every position you have.
Against every command-and-control center, against every position everywhere.". I would do it all with air power, but I would do it like Desert Storm and I would do it like 1972 (when the U.S. bombed North Vietnam).
I would not do it when Nixon used B-52s against North Vietnam. I would not engage in this nonsensical, "you shoot one missile at us, we'll drop one bomb."
This is the dumbest--this is as though Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam never occurred.
--Meet the Press. December 4, 1994
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.147
Jan 1, 1995
On Welfare & Poverty:
Change America one church & one organization at a time
We're not going to change America in Washington D.C. We're going to change America one individual at a time, one family at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one church or synagogue at a time, one voluntary organization at a time, one private business
at a time, and then one local government, one school board, one city council, one state legislature. And yeah, the Congress and the President are going to have a role to play in all this.
--Speech at the Capitol, Washington D.C. December 5, 1994
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.113
Jan 1, 1995
On Welfare & Poverty:
Tell the poor the truth: to be middle class is to work hard
We don't tell the poor the truth, which is, to be middle class is to work hard. To be middle class is to do a lot of things you don't want to do. And yet the rewards, the ability to live a decent life, to plan your career, to send your kids to school,
to go on a nice vacation, to have a decent home, those rewards are paid for by hard work, and there is no shortcut.
--Renewing American Civilization, Class 2Show me a wagon train that had food stamps. Show me a wagon train that had able bodied
adults who were not working. Show me a wagon train that dealt with its criminals while allowing them to wander around committing new crimes. Show me a wagon train that taxed the productive in order to subsidize people who did not want to do a day's work.
--Referring to N.Y. Governor Mario Cuomo's 1984 DNC Convention Speech
When the welfare state finds reasons to excuse people from personal strength, it begins the process of destroying them.
--Renewing American Civilization, Class 2
Source: Quotations from Speaker Newt, by A.&P. Bernstein, p.114-5
Jan 1, 1995
Page last updated: Feb 24, 2019