Top 45 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Babbitt

What I finally did in 1995 was I said, I'm going to get out of this town and I'm going to go out West.

I'm going to go out and get everybody together and say I think we ought to protect this for generations to come. Now, let's get down to work and walk the land and talk about the conflicts and get everybody involved.

Well, it's not a pleasant experience. And it's a terribly political process, because that thing was initiated by the Congress and by, you know, our adversaries in the Congress.

The Northwest is in better shape than it was eight years ago.

Well, I think breathing life into the Endangered Species Act, taking those wolves back into Yellowstone, restoring the salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest.

I wouldn't miss this opportunity for anything. For the chance to work on these conservation issues, to serve my country, to work for this president, I'd do it all over again, every single minute.

Look, this job has always been a crucible of conflict.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

I look back on it, yeah, I'm in a much worse financial position than I was eight years ago. I'm going to have to go out at age 62 and kind of readdress some of that.

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

No kidding. That's really true. You're paying your own bills through this. It's not a pleasant experience.

I think the people will- who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.

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.

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.

Protecting all this land, working with the President to establish all these monuments, to, you know... I think the President has a land protection record that's second to no one in this century, maybe Teddy Roosevelt.

Look, I think by the time my case was over and other ones, everybody on both sides of the aisle in Congress said we can't run a government by this kind of process and they repealed the law and that's good.

What we've proven is that you can protect the environment, use it wisely and grow the economy and that there is no conflict between the two.

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do.

It is like living in a wilderness of mirrors. No fact goes unchallenged.

Obviously I wouldn't have said that three or four years ago in the midst of it. But I really believe that. It's been a marvelous and important experience.

This isn't just about today, this about generations to come. And you've got a chance to be the greatest conservation President since Theodore Roosevelt, and I think he's done it.

I grew up in the West, grew up on the land, was educated as a geologist.

We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our capital... with God's creation. And we need to administer and work that very carefully.

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.

I am one of those people who deeply resents not having been born in the 19th century, when there were still open places to explore.

We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion.

I think it is important that religious leaders of all kinds consciously attempt to distinguish between issues of natural law on which there is consensus among Catholic, Protestant, and Jew and those issues on which there must be a greater degree of tolerance of other peoples' opinions and of the diversity that is characteristic of American society.

When I was at Notre Dame studying under Joe Evans, Frank O'Malley, and others, there was a very lively debate about the distinction between natural law and revealed truth. Most of the philosophers of church and state expected that what was going to be advocated as the law of the land would be related to natural law. If you attempted to draw lines about certain general moral truths that were derivative of logic and reason, they would prove to be widely shared, and therefore suitable to be enacted into law on both the civic and religious sides.

I think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.

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.

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.

I think of Martin Luther King phrase a lot when I'm deciding public issues. He said: "Here I stand: I can do no other." It is basically an affirmation of my ultimate responsibility to obey my conscience in my acts as a public official.

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.

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 been very outspoken in my opposition to cuts in what I would call the means-tested entitlement programs: Medicaid, food stamps, and all of that. I feel very, very strongly that those cuts as proposed are unjust, but I am not prepared to label Ronald Reagan a "sinner."It seems to me that when you invoke the adjective "moral" you must be careful to distinguish what it is you mean by that.

I think there has been an unfortunate tendency for a lot of different groups to forget that distinction between natural law and revealed truth and to say: Our complete agenda is to be enacted into laws governing the entire society. Many different religious groups claim that authority, not only Catholics. A lot of different Protestant groups as well are stepping forward to say: Here is our agenda, it is a moral agenda, ergo it must be enacted into law. I think that the distinction between natural law and more ultimate kinds of doctrine is being lost.

The notion that big business and big labor and big government can sit down around a table somewhere and work out the direction of the American economy is at complete variance with the reality of where the American economy is headed. I mean, it's like dinosaurs gathering to talk about the evolution of a new generation of mammals.

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.

I would argue that practices that destroy ecosystems always destroy jobs.

City parks serve, day in and day out, as the primary green spaces for the majority of Americans.

I think the Ronald Reagan tax reform proposals are a step toward distributive justice. They redistribute the tax burden more equitably and more progressively among individuals and call upon business to carry a somewhat larger proportion of the total tax load. Both of these are steps toward equity and distributive justice.

Taxes are the flip side of expenditures. The same issues apply on both sides. There are questions of fairness and justice as much in the way you take money away as in the way you disburse it.