List of Bruce Babbitt Quotes

We Do Not Put Enough Emphasis On Early Childhood Years. We Neglect Children In This Society; As A Society We're Guilty Of Child Neglect. If We Could Eliminate The Vestiges Of Racism, If We Could Develop A More Powerful Agenda For Child Care, Child Development, And A More Powerful Education System, We Could Prevent A Lot Of The Incapacities Which In Turn Tend To Generate Structural Unemployment.

I'm A Product Of A Notre Dame Education; Those Professors Taught Me A Lot About How You Separate The City Of God From The State. I'm Also A Reverent Follower Of The Tradition Of Thomas Jefferson. My Years Of Public Life Have Simply Confirmed The Intensity Of My Belief That What I Have Learned From Joe Evans And Thomas Jefferson Was Correct.

On Areas Like Abortion Where There Is Major Disagreement Among The Mainstream Religious Groups In The Judeo-christian Tradition, I Believe That Requires A Lot More Caution. The Jewish Position On Abortion Is Very Different From The Roman Catholic Position. That Is Reason To Be Cautious About Enacting Laws Rather Than Saying To The Religious Group: Instruct Your Followers On These Matters As Matters Of Personal Religious Belief.

I Have No Question That The Roman Catholic Church Teaches That Abortion In Virtually All Circumstances Is Wrong. I Think The Church's Position At All Times In Modern History Has Been That It Is Unequivocally Opposed To Abortion.but That's Not The Question For A Catholic Who Is A Public Official. I Happen To Subscribe To The Church's Position As A Person. Still The Question, As Governor Mario Cuomo Suggested, Is: What Is Your Obligation As A Civic Leader? I Agree Entirely With John F. Kennedy. I Answer Only To My Conscience In My Public Life And That's That.

I Was Nurtured In The Church; I Went To A Catholic School; I Was An Altar Boy; I Went To A Catholic University; I Was Steeped In The Moral Tradition Of The Catholic Church. My Catholicism Plays A Very Strong Role. But I Thought President John F.kennedy Answered Rather Well When He Said That Ultimately My Conduct As A Public Official Does Not Come Ex Cathedra From Rome; It Comes From My Conscience.

We've Set Aside Tens Of Millions Of Acres Of Those Northwestern Forests For Perpetuity. The Unemployment Rate Has Gone Not Up, But Down. The Economy Has Gone Up.

Well, What I Tried To Do Is Simply To Get Out On The Land. And When I Came To Washington, I Think One Of The Mistakes We Made Early On Was Kind Of Having An Ideological Dispute Up In The Congress.

If The Bishops Are Saying That It Is Divine Revelation That Seven Percent Of Unemployment Is Morally Unacceptable And That That Is A Teaching Which Must As A Matter Of Faith Be Accepted By All Catholics, I Respectfully Dissent.

The Northwest Is In Better Shape Than It Was Eight Years Ago.

We Must Identify Our Enemies And Drive Them Into Oblivion.

We Had Kind Of A Rocky Start, But I Spent A Lot Of Time Working With The President And Handing Him Statistics And Showing Him What We Were Doing As We Went Along And Kind Of Saying To Him, You Know, This Is Really Important.

Broadly Speaking, It Is My Conclusion That A Pretty Good Guide To Most Issues Of Natural Law Is To Look At Those Areas Where You Find A Consensus In The Judeo-christian Tradition. I Think That Is Roughly, Not Unerringly, The Outline Of What I Would Call Natural Law.there Must Be Some Moral Values Underlying Any Civilization; That's My Guide.