Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by Alan K. Simpson

Before holding elective office - 12 years in the Wyoming House of Representatives and 18 years in the U.S. Senate - I served a different type of time. I was on probation for a federal offense committed as a teenager.

Stemming the tide of special interest campaign cash - and restoring fiscal responsibility in Congress - is no easy task. But there is one place where concerned citizens in both parties can begin: Changing the source of money that funds all campaigns.

My parole officer always believed in my capacity for redemption, even when my actions did not inspire confidence.

In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay?

America's Founders were committed to a wide-open public forum in which all voices and perspectives could have a chance of being heard.

The AARP is a group of 3.8 million Americans bound together by a common love of airline discounts and insurance discounts.

If children who commit crimes are not given the opportunity of a second chance, they may die in prison for acts made before having developed the cognitive and emotional skills needed to make informed and smart decisions and choices.

There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

Restoring and maintaining a great nation's fiscal health will require not just sound arguments and an engaged public but something more. It will require an electoral system that encourages our representatives to place the long-term interests of the public ahead of parochial special interests.

It was not until my 20s that I began to creep toward maturity.

I served three terms in the U.S. Senate and was co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010. So I know a bit about how Washington operates, and I have had plenty of experience doing the work of running for office.

Money's dominance over politics isn't merely one problem of many our country faces. It is the problem! It is a growing crisis that prevents us from tackling anything else.

Reagan didn't put anything off the table, if he felt it was for the good of the American people to tweak the tax system.

Voluntary public funding of elections solves the free speech 'problem' with more speech instead of more regulation: by giving qualified candidates who show broad-based constituent support enough matching public funds to mount a credible campaign.

The Republican Party I represented proudly for 18 years did not shy away from taking on special-interest money when it conflicted with constituents' needs.

As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review - and overturn - the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for 'don't ask, don't tell.' But much has changed since 1993. My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay.

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

Let us end 'don't ask, don't tell.'

You were doing a sadistic little disservice to your country.

He has to do the heavy lifting and the windows and the wash, and also protect the president.

Without the confidence to know our democracy is functioning properly, we risk more disillusionment, more cynicism, and even more public apathy toward the entire system.

The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30, 40, or 50. Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

When a young person is sent 'up the river,' we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager.

If you're in the game long enough, you're going to be the toast of the town one day, and the next day you'll be toast.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo.

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.

He's a million rubber bands in his resilience.

The word liberal distinguishes whatever nourishes the mind and spirit from the training which is merely practical or professional or from the trivialities which are no training at all.

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

The concept of government of, by, and for the people isn't just a platitude. It's the moral construction of our nation. It's in our bones.

I am living proof that youth possess a unique capacity to grow and change - that the child who seems hopeless today could go on to change the world.

If the need for comprehensive campaign finance reform was not already clear, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United permitting unlimited corporate and union spending in campaigns certainly made it so in 2010.

Across the nation, there are thousands of individuals serving life or life-equivalent sentences for crimes they committed as children. This means they will likely die in prison without a chance to prove to society they are worthy of a second chance.

I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don't believe male legislators should even vote on the issue.

Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that 'gay' is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person.

I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again. I'm an Alan Simpson Republican.

People tend to stay at home and eat a home-cooked meal. There are three days that are really slow for restaurants - Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Nonetheless, GAO's conclusion that employer sanctions had somehow caused employment discrimination was contradicted by GAO's own Chief of Methodology, who criticized the GAO report. ...here is what she said, 'I believe the truth is that we have no strong causal link between IRCA and discrimination, and in [my] view it is just as likely that the discrimination we found has always been there, or that it is spurious, as that IRCA has caused it.'

A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.

We have two political parties in this country, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. I belong to the Stupid Party.

Every time one of us starts talking about more effective immigration controls, somebody else throws up the Statue of Liberty, how we're a nation of immigrants and all of that. The debate takes on tinges of racism, emotion.

It doesn't matter is you call it 'Obama-care' or 'Elvis Presley care' or 'I-don't-care care.' It cannot sustain itself in its present form.

Now it's just sharp elbows, and instead of having a caucus where you sit down and say, 'What are you doing for your country?' you sit figuring out how to screw the other side.

If you torture statistics long enough, they'll eventually confess the truth

Those who travel the high road of humility are not troubled by heavy traffic.

It is a travesty, in my mind, for the state and local governments on the one hand to expect the Federal government to reimburse them for costs attributable to illegal immigrants, when on the other hand the State and local governments prohibit their own law enforcement and other officials from cooperating with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to locate or apprehend or expel illegal aliens.

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

Grandchildren now don't write a thank you for the Christmas presents. They are walking on their pants with their cap on backward, listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy, Snoopy Poop Dog.

In your country club, your church, and business, about fifteen percent of the people are screwballs, lightweights, and boobs, and you would not want those people unrepresented in Congress.

I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge.

So let us take our fair share of the true refugees and act responsible as a government in providing for their necessary expenses. Let us stop skewing the whole process by taking some folks who are not truly refugees in order simply to meet our foreign policy needs or domestic policy demands. There has to be a better way to meet those needs and demands than we are doing now. I think it is embarrassing to all of us who truly know the mission of the Refugee Act.