Eliot Spitzer quotes

Eliot Spitzer is an American lawyer and former politician, best known for serving as the Governor of New York and as the state's Attorney General. His career was marked by prominent prosecutions of corporate crime and corruption. He resigned from office following a scandal and later became a media commentator. Here are 56 of his quotes:

Never talk when you can nod and never nod when you can wink and never write an e-mail, because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.

Eliot Spitzer

Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

Eliot Spitzer

Yes, people pull the trigger - but guns are the instrument of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror.

Eliot Spitzer

The pace of global warming is accelerating and the scale of the impact is devastating. The time for action is limited - we are approaching a tipping point beyond which the opportunity to reverse the damage of CO2 emissions will disappear.

Eliot Spitzer

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

Eliot Spitzer

I don't care about motivation. I care about credibility.

Eliot Spitzer

Sometimes in politics, you think you've seen it all. Turns out I was wrong.

Eliot Spitzer

In politics you learn to always smile.

Eliot Spitzer

As someone with a deep faith in competition and the market, I also know that markets only work with tough enforcement of the rules that guarantee competition and fair play - and that the pressure to break those rules only gets stronger as the amount of money involved gets larger.

Eliot Spitzer

After 25-plus years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and defense attorney, I have developed a deep appreciation for both the wisdom of the law and the role that jurists play in framing the rights and responsibilities that define our society.

Eliot Spitzer

Tax rates for the wealthy should revert to Clinton-era levels, both because it is necessary for long-term deficit reduction and because fairness dictates it. Moreover, there is no proof that higher marginal rates dissuade investment, all the rhetoric from the Right notwithstanding.

Eliot Spitzer

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

Eliot Spitzer

Health care reform, the marquee legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration's first term, was passed before we entered the world of divided government.

Eliot Spitzer

As one who was a prosecutor for many years, I can tell you that having a tape recording of interrogations would help everybody. It would make clear if there had been improper pressure exerted on a defendant or witness, and it would also protect the interrogating officer from false claims that such pressure had been brought to bear.

Eliot Spitzer

While their fiscal views aren't mine, the moderates are the last reasonable voice in the current Republican Party.

Eliot Spitzer

It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

Eliot Spitzer

A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.

Eliot Spitzer

The irony is that it was tougher to rent a car from Cerberus when it owned Alamo than to buy a semi-automatic. To rent a car, one had to provide ID, a drivers' license, and get insurance coverage. To buy a gun? Cash and carry, from the back of a station wagon at a gun show. No concerns about downstream liability or risk.

Eliot Spitzer

I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.

Eliot Spitzer

Public speaking? I speak to myself on the street!

Eliot Spitzer

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

Eliot Spitzer

A significant piece of the wealth that the NFL owners garner is a result of the enormous TV revenues they get - and those revenues are supported by a legislatively granted exemption from the antitrust laws that has been made applicable to sports leagues, primarily the NFL.

Eliot Spitzer