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'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 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 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.