Rudy Giuliani York Quotations

When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded.

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.

When we faced a possibility here in New York of chemical and biological attack, three days after September 11, I called in all of the experts, academic experts, Nobel Prize laureates, and doctors who had dealt with anthrax, doctors who had dealt with various forms of chemical and biological attack.

Now we understand much more clearly. why people from all over the world want to come to New York and to America. It's called freedom.

I've probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in New York City with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years.

I was Mayor of New York during a great Yankees dynasty. I got to preside over the city during four Yankees championships.

With the spirit of my administration, New York City is poised for dramatic change. The era of fear has had a long enough reign.

I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas.

What did Sept. 11 do? It took me from 60-70 percent name recognition as mayor of New York to about 90 percent. Of course it had an impact. But it's not the only reason I was successful.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

Bonuses balance my budget in New York City. The bigger the bonuses on Wall Street, the more money I had to spend on poor people. The New York City budget is determined greatly by the bonuses given on Wall Street.

When I became mayor of New York City, I had a $2.4 billion deficit. And everybody wanted me to raise taxes. I said, 'If I raise taxes, I'll drive people out of New York City, and then I'll be raising taxes again.' So what I did was I cut expenses by 15 percent.

I lowered taxes in New York. I reduced the size of government in New York. I took a $2.4 billion deficit and turned it into a $3.2 billion surplus. And I reduced taxes over 23 times or 23 times.

The most visible symbol in New York is the spirit of a free people.

I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can't stop us.

Although I have to leave you as mayor soon, I resume the much more honorable title of citizen of New York, and citizen of the United States.

While I was the mayor abortions in New York went down and adoptions went way up, because we worked on adoptions as an alternative, so that there'd be a real choice.

Being mayor of New York was a crisis a week and an emergency every other day.