George Pataki State Quotations

When I left, there were over 1 million fewer people on welfare in New York state than when I took office, replacing dependency with opportunity.

What I did in New York was bring people together, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. But I was able to get Democrats to support the most conservative sweeping policy changes in any state in America.

Do we want someone has a national agenda of what she will achieve for the people of Arkansas and Illinois in the U.S. Senate, or do we want someone who is one of us, a native New Yorker who understands this state, who has fought for this state, who has represented this state in Washington, who shares our philosophy?

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

I'm very proud of what we've done with the State University and the City University. They're totally different institutions than they were when I took office.

I'm excited about the opportunities to move the state forward even more than we've come over the course of the past year, and that's my focus.

I don't need a court to say that not just New York City but other particularly low-income school districts across the state had been short-changed.