J. C. Watts Quotations

I'm secure in who I am. I don't need the validation of those that would say, you have to be a certain thing in order to be accepted. I'm comfortable going against the grain if I need to.

I like to call the ethos I grew up with 'Oklahoma values.' But you'd be just as accurate if you said 'American values.' Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that's American.

Reparations, I believe, are talked about for political reasons, trying to cater for the purpose of getting votes. If Congress was serious about reparations - in '93 and '94 the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, and not one single Republican vote was needed for reparations.

I think you grow wherever God plants you. I hope I'm growing as a person of faith, as a Christian. That should be our number one objective this journey of life. That all starts with a personal intimate relationship with Christ and then being in prayer every single day about all of those things - being tenacious about it.

I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.

The measure of a man is not how great his faith is, but how great his love is. We must not let government programs disconnect our souls from each other.

For longer than I've been involved in the political process, the Republican establishment has claimed to want to provide an alternative for the black community, yet party elite refuse to show up for the game.

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.

Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.

Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school.

The establishment wonders why we can't get more of the black vote. It's because it's not doing the things necessary to establish a deeper relationship with the black community. Most black people don't think alike. Most black people just vote alike.

I'm looking forward to the day when America will mature to the point that we are a color-blind society. I'm not so sure that in politics that will ever be reality, because politics has a way of separating us based on skin color.

I embrace my blackness, just as I do my conservatism and my Christianity, but I don't want to be defined or pigeonholed by any one of the many elements that make up my character.

The Democratic Party has taken the black community for granted and said, 'This is the most loyal constituency we have. They're not going anywhere.' But the Republican Party has said, 'That's the most loyal constituency Democrats have. They're not going anywhere. We've got to win without them.'

I do think, however, that there's a very diverse point of view in the African-American community. There's a lot of different voices that need to be heard. I don't claim and pretend to know the thoughts and opinions and ideas of all African-Americans.

I think the Republican Party should be a pro-life party. I am pro-life. I do not apologize for that. On the flip side of that coin, the Republican Party has been big enough to allow pro-choice advocates to be heard.

Republicans think that the NAACP is the only voice in the black community. It is a voice in the black community. But it's not the only voice.

I never got into politics for it to be a career. It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.

I would caution all of us or I would remind all of us that any candidate that we support, they are going to be flawed.

Individual responsibility, hard work, paying attention in school, faith, family all these things are important.

When it comes to the American dream, no one has a corner on the market. All of us have an equal chance to share in that dream.

That's the way blacks have been encouraged to think: that we got to stick together. You've got a situation today where if a black person says he thinks O.J. Simpson's guilty, other blacks will cut their eyes at him and say, 'You ought to go somewhere and sit down and shut up.'

In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican, with God as my witness, not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That's a good thing.

The more I ponder some of the boneheaded decisions GOP candidates have made of late, I can't bring myself to believe that they are serious about capturing more than about 8 percent of the black vote.

Serving in Congress has been more than an honor; it has been one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life... It has been a wonderful ride. It has been a wonderful journey.

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself.

There's a whole lot more to the African-American community than entertainment and sports.

We need to remember that politics is all about people, not programs. We shouldn't want to take the humanness out of the political arena.

I think Newt Gingrich has a proven track record of changing Washington and getting results.

I still get to preach 14, 15 times a year. But you have to make a living.

I don't know if anybody has moved up the ladder more quickly than I have.

I have often said one of the reasons more blacks don't support Republicans is because they don't trust the GOP establishment.

In addition, there is one title I cherish a great deal more than Congressman and that is the title of... Dad.

Some might think that George W. Bush had his shortcomings, but let me tell you something - history's going to be kind to George W. Bush.

The strength of America is not in Washington.

You always hear 'black Republican,' but you never hear 'white Democrat.' We've got to get beyond the labels and stereotypes. Other people have hang-ups about it. I don't.

I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television's most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.

I think that anybody that stays in school, gets good grades, pays the price, I think we are wealthy enough in the public and the private sector in America to make sure that every child in America that wants to continue their education, they should be able to do that.

Having a Republican candidate speak at the NAACP convention is like trying to build a house starting at the roof. If you don't have a foundation, the roof isn't going to stand.

Most of all, however, critics of black conservatives say we've forgotten where we came from. I may forget a federal budget number or, God forbid, to set the alarm clock for my weekly 6 a.m. flight to Washington, but I know exactly where I came from.

I'm not driven to get back into politics. It's not on my top five things to do before I die, but saying that, I may be in politics in the next year or the next ten years. I've been on the front line for 12 years, four in state government, eight on the national level.

Consider in Washington, around the country today we are talking about balanced budgets, paying down our national debt, getting the economy going, defending ourselves, activist judges. Newt Gingrich did all those things when he was speaker. We got tax relief. We got balanced budgets. We got, you know, job creation. We paid down our national debt.

In 2008, as a matter of fact, I had people accusing me of being a Senator Obama supporter because I wouldn't slam him. I said, 'Well, consider the fact that I voted for impeachment for President Clinton, but it wasn't a personal vote. I voted based on the facts and the law and the Constitution and what we were dealing with.'

The past two decades revolutionized the way we access information. You and I can have our questions answered with the click of a mouse at any time of day. If America, both corporation and citizen alike, can use these services to solve problems, why can't Washington?

Well, Mark, I led the charge for five or six years to get reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I was chairman of an organization called 'FM Policy Focus.' What we were saying was, if there was blip in the housing market, Fannie and Freddie would destabilize the greatest economy in the world.

Governor is not the position to have in Oklahoma. It is the head coach of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State or Tulsa.

As an Oklahoma quarterback, you learn to perform under pressure.

Good policy makes good politics and what I've done has been good politics.

I never got into politics for it to be a career.

My work in the House of Representatives, at this time in my life, is completed. It is time to return home.

One of the Republicans' major products is dream making. People are dying to get into this country... not out of it.

When you look at the results that Newt Gingrich got when he was speaker, he got results for the American people.

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.

I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character - not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don't think the political process could actually handle that.

I would love to be associated with some sports organization. I was a journalism major. That's kind of intriguing, to do something in the political-commentary arena.

The Republican Party is terrific at determining how a program will impact the federal budget, but we're not nearly as good as the Democrats in explaining to people how our agenda will directly benefit them and their families.

One of the chief considerations of the decorative arts galleries was that they should be suitable for the display of textiles, and for this initial exhibition we have chosen mainly textiles from the 15th through the 17th centuries,

Ontario is saying 'look, this program is already sort of hurting us. We didn't mind for the longest time because we could easily afford it. Now it's starting to pinch.

I worked in L.A. for 25 years, ... I played oboe, English horn, piccolo, flute, clarinet. But what happens when you do that is you spend your practice time on instruments you are weaker on to make them stronger. The instruments you are strong on become weaker. At some point, you end up in a mush of mediocrity. I was working for quantity, and I wanted to get back to my primary interest, which was to play jazz on the saxophone.

If we don't make offers (today), we're behind schedule.

I guess I'll go to the Vanity Fair party.

Nicholls never supported the program. The program did not grow like the Board of Regents and the administration assumed it would. Nicholls started the program, but now wants to eliminate it.

One of the things we're worried about is that our government, perhaps, would just as soon forget about those people and let them go where they are and fend for themselves, ... That is inconsistent with what we said as a nation we would do for the victims of this hurricane.

Of course before we race it's freezing, but as soon as you get on the line, you've got to get it out of your head. We knew that we'd basically go in anything besides thunder and lightning, but I didn't think it would be this bad today.

Next week I'll just do the best I can. Win a couple of matches to qualify and go from there.

I have friends who didn't turn 60. As you get older, your perspective clears.

I didn't wrestle good today. It was just an off day. I wasn't finishing any of my moves or taking advantage of anything.

If they have deceived the public into believing I did something I did not do and then went about convicting an innocent man, they should receiv no less punishment then they would impose on me,

We're just getting energy prices going through the roof. The longer period of time (consumers) have these elevated prices, the more it starts to weigh on sentiment. People have held on pretty well but the longer this remains the more risky it becomes.

Most people who own Sprint stock want growth, and land-line stock isn't growing.

She extended those principles of the founding fathers in a way that applies to all of us,

She had a great emotional journey in the first one and it was not just your classic genre picture with a damsel-in-distress kind of role. It was more than that and that's what drew me to the first. And I always knew when I did the first that there was going to be a number two.

She (Wray) looked up at me and went, 'You're not Ann Darrow. I am! ... At the end of the night ... she whispered in my ear 'Ann Darrow is in good hands.' Those were great parting words.

She's like a mother to me. She treats me like a daughter. She was sweet, sweet. Lord, she was a sweet lady.

She was so sweet. Anything you needed, Mother Stiles was there for you.

what I do and enjoy best, playing mainstream jazz.

Half of it is being born with that. Of course, 80 percent is work. But, you have to be born with that little bit that makes you an Earl Palmer.

There are so many moving parts. It works best as the first game of the season and Mess told us he can't wait, so we'd like to get to it as soon as possible.

I am surprised that someone has not suggested or begun building a mall out east,

I fought and fought because it's so important to these seniors. We wrestle so well at home at the regional here.

Funnily enough we have been able to relax this week. We know that this is a massive game but in a way the pressure is off knowing that we are promoted. But we also want to win the title and we will be all out to do that.

Given limits on the size of departments, and as we try to have some diversity in terms of research specialties, it means that having one person depart can leave a real gap, ... If we lose those three people, yes, there will be a shortfall, but it's not like there's no one here for majors to work with. But when you find a professor's work inspiring and then suddenly that person's going, it's not really satisfying to be told there are plenty of faculty left.

For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do

If Brenda had ever done anything wrong, Smith would have brought her up on charges and then drummed her out of the Air Force.

If a lot of people independently vote for a song, we are going to call that quality.

I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.

We managed to patch up Scott McLean although he was at the toilet all night. We have only 16 players, but our lads play with passion and for each other.

He was smart when he was off. He did therapy and did everything right. He still has a ways to go to get ready for downtown.

He couldn't do that since she is straight as an arrow and one of the most ethical and trustworthy individuals I know.

I am in absolute, full and uninhibited support of Chairman Sensenbrenner in having extensive hearings, on-site hearings and accepting those from other organizations that will conduct their own,

I am happy to say that after many years of hard work on promoting external defibrillators, the House of Representatives will vote on legislation on Tuesday to help save the lives of cardiac arrest victims.

If those two men (Kong and Driscoll) were welded into one, that would definitely make the perfect man. Adrien Brody plays the writer. He has all the words. Kong has all the soul, and all the power as well.

I'm a strong Liberal. I've voted Liberal all my life. I probably will again. But not this time. It's time for a change.

History always changes and everything that we owned 10 years ago is becoming obsolete electronically.

His matches were too close. Quintana is a good wrestler, but he's a freshman, and he should have put it too him.

There aren't a whole lot of academic competitions to get involved in on campus, so this is good that we're having this.