Fred Thompson famous quotes

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood
-- Fred Thompson

#Witty #Two #Years

Fewer and fewer people are paying larger and larger percentage of the tax burden, as you know, almost half the people pay no income taxes at all. We're going to have more people in the wagon than we got pulling the wagon before long and that's not going to work. Those jobless numbers, you know, go hand-in-hand with those tax numbers.
-- Fred Thompson

#Hands #Numbers #Long

A lot of people out there working hard and finally building up to getting a pretty good income. Higher tax rates on them, you know, the income rates going up, the dividend rates are going up, the capital gains rates all going up before health care kicks in.
-- Fred Thompson

#People #Income #Care

If we have more people on the receiving end of government - more people as the middle class becomes sucked in more and more to these entitlement programs, for example - then we're going to be in a place where it's going to be hard to go back. It's going to be hard to go back again. It's going to be hard to take away stuff. It's not impossible.
-- Fred Thompson

#Government #Class #People

We're hoping for the best, but we need to prepare for the worst.
-- Fred Thompson

#Needs #Hoping For The Best #Worst

The average 20-year-old serving us in Iraq knows more about their country's national security than the average 20-year political veteran serving in the Congress today.
-- Fred Thompson

#Country #Average #Years

This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America.
-- Fred Thompson

#Country #Tired #Blood

I’m not particularly interested in running for president,
-- Fred Thompson

#Running #President

Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world,
-- Fred Thompson

#Children #Suicidal #Men

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.
-- Fred Thompson

#Lucky

Superfund was passed with the good intention of cleaning up America's toxic waste sites
-- Fred Thompson

#America #Toxic #Waste

So China will be having to make some choices as to whose side it wants to be on. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a major improvement in our relationship with them, if they choose correctly
-- Fred Thompson

#Choices #Want #Sides

Nobody wants to open a business near a Superfund site and risk being sued
-- Fred Thompson

#Risk #Want #Site

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that
-- Fred Thompson

#Long #People #American History

Clearly, the Chinese know that we want a good relationship with them
-- Fred Thompson

#Good Relationship #Chinese #Want

There's a lot more to competence than a law degree and a modicum of courtroom skill.
-- Fred Thompson

#Law #Skills #Degrees

Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan.
-- Fred Thompson

#Son #Dump #Plans

Cyberspace is the battlefield of tomorrow... Instead of confronting us head-to-head on the traditional battlefield, adversaries will confront the U.S. at its point of least resistance- our information infrastructure.
-- Fred Thompson

#Military #Cyberspace #Information

A new report shows that medicare and Medicaid made more than $50 Billion in bad payments during fiscal year 2011. Under Obamacare, that'll become known as 'Tuesday.'
-- Fred Thompson

#Years #Obamacare #Tuesday

A new survey shows that the American public is more conservative now than at any point since 1952. The bad news is that all the liberals that died since then are still voting.
-- Fred Thompson

#Voting #News #Politics

I think that we ought to be a tolerant nation. I think we ought to be tolerant people. But we shouldn't set up special categories for anybody. And I'm for the rights of everybody, including gays, but not any special rights.
-- Fred Thompson

#Gay #Thinking #Rights

I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing.
-- Fred Thompson

#Summertime #Bigger

Roe v. Wade was bad law and bad medical science,
-- Fred Thompson

#Law #Wade #Medical

I think that there is a relatively small number of people who are pushing for independence in Taiwan.
-- Fred Thompson

#Thinking #Numbers #People

But if the Chinese mainland, the PRC, attacked Taiwan, we'd be obligated to come to their aid.
-- Fred Thompson

#Chinese #Taiwan #Aids

Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns.
-- Fred Thompson

#Presidential #Chinese #Campaigns

And I believe in the 13 years Judge Roberts was there, he never turned down a request to give some assistance on a pro-bono case, and this was no different.
-- Fred Thompson

#Believe #Years #Giving

The problem is that agencies sometimes lose sight of common sense as they create regulations.
-- Fred Thompson

#Agency #Sight #Common Sense

Hopefully, we can build bridges, but we also have to draw lines.
-- Fred Thompson

#Bridges #Lines #Draws

A [person] who Never quits is never defeated.
-- Fred Thompson

#Success #Never Quit #Quitting

You can't substitute promise after promise with known violators of prior promises at the expense of protecting ourselves or setting an example.
-- Fred Thompson

#Promise #Example #Substitutes

Is it really in our countrys best interest to signal to the enemy that they probably only have to wait us out a little longer because congressional determination to defeat them is crumbling? Doesnt such a resolution further diminish our chances for success at the very time our soldiers are preparing to go into battle? And finally, regardless of our politics is this the time to announce to the world that our president is 'on his own'?
-- Fred Thompson

#Determination #Waiting #Soldier

Every foreign policy of every major nation involves reason, common sense, carrots and sticks. You can't have all carrots and no sticks.
-- Fred Thompson

#Common Sense #Sticks #Reason

Sometimes you have to, as I say, build bridges where you can - but draw lines where you must.
-- Fred Thompson

#Bridges #Lines #Sometimes

Standing up here 10 in a row, you know, like a bunch of seals waiting for somebody to throw you the next fish, is not necessarily the best way to impart your information to the American people. I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time.
-- Fred Thompson

#People #Waiting #Acting

I know the pundits, they get big bucks for . . . pundating.
-- Fred Thompson

#Bucks #Pundits #Bigs

I don't attend [church] regularly...
-- Fred Thompson

#Church

Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.
-- Fred Thompson

#Country #Encouragement #Party

You can't buy peace by just wishing it and avoiding the challenges that other nations present to you.
-- Fred Thompson

#Challenges #Wish #Avoiding

During a campaign speech in Ohio, President Obama said, 'I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth'. So to be fair, he wants to take your silverware and spread it around.
-- Fred Thompson

#Ohio #President #Campaigns

But obviously, we can't afford to make some bad long-term decisions with regard to basic commitments our country has - trade those away for some short-term assistance that may or may not be there a month from now.
-- Fred Thompson

#Country #Commitment #Long

While we believe there are fruitful opportunities to update and improve old rules, we do not want to set up a review process that could create a litigation morass.
-- Fred Thompson

#Believe #Opportunity #Want

We also have to ask if we focusing on the most important priorities.
-- Fred Thompson

#Priorities #Important

In the end, we may be hurting the very people we should be concerned about - the inner-city poor, those who already have to live with many risks in their daily lives, those who do not have clout here in Washington.
-- Fred Thompson

#Hurt #Cities #People

I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time.
-- Fred Thompson

#Waiting #Acting #Want

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists.
-- Fred Thompson

#Thinking #Kyoto #People

The Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Obama's stepped-up visits to campaign events. Good, now he can carry his entire ego with him on the trail.
-- Fred Thompson

#Military #Air #Support

We have some real political differences among us, but we all share the same goals: clean air and water, injury free workplaces, safe transportation systems, to name a few of the good things that can come from regulation.
-- Fred Thompson

#Real #Air #Names

China is one of the world's greatest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction to these rogue nations
-- Fred Thompson

#World #Weapons #Rogues

I think that the justices were totally answering the way that they should. I think that the senators, as best I could tell, for the most part, Democrat and Republican, respected that
-- Fred Thompson

#Thinking #Justice #Way

And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up
-- Fred Thompson

#Democracy #World #Lines

So if you look back over the long history of China, they've never tried to take over the world, but they've been quite aggressive in their own neighborhood... in carrying out their own purposes and interests in their sphere of the world
-- Fred Thompson

#Long #Looks #Purpose

For example, lead paint in old houses can be a greater threat to children's health than lead that may be under some industrial site where there are no children
-- Fred Thompson

#Children #House #Example

That is, while we believe that cost-benefit analysis is an important tool to inform agency decision making, the results of the cost-benefit analysis do not trump existing law
-- Fred Thompson

#Believe #Agency #Law

And it's difficult for the average American to understand why something like that could be so important and why a little small place like Taiwan would be so important to the PRC
-- Fred Thompson

#Average #Important #Taiwan

We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster
-- Fred Thompson

#Successful #Nuclear #Disaster

Study: 60% of young Americans plan to buy firearms. The other 40% were confused, saying they thought they were free under Obamacare.
-- Fred Thompson

#Confused #Obamacare #Study

We just ask the agency to make reasonable and honest decisions, and the public deserves no less.
-- Fred Thompson

#Agency #Decision #Honest

If we do not design policies to halt, and then reverse population growth, Nature by default will soon exact a most punishing solution
-- Fred Thompson

#Design #Growth #Population

We, as a nation, cannot wait for the Pearl Harbor of the information age. We must increase our vigilance to tackle this problem before we are hit with a surprise attack.
-- Fred Thompson

#Waiting #Age #Pearls