American Quotes

Neither political party is clean when it comes to tactics that divide our people.

In my first year as governor, we solved some of the problems that had begun to undermine the Open Records Act. We gave the act teeth by providing criminal penalties for knowing violations.

I want business to prosper and make a profit caused by business expansion and prosperity.

I am committed to making Georgia a model for open and honest government.

Georgia is in an enviable position today, but we can't rest on our laurels.

Enhancing revenues will help us improve education and solve our infrastructure problems.

By creating a Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, we will give local governments a framework for working together on an issue that affects our whole state.

Business and the state have a common interest; not an adversarial interest.

As the population of Georgia increased dramatically, so did development.

As the leaders and decision-makers of this great state, it is our responsibility to strive for perfection.

And this week, I am proposing legislation to strengthen our Open Records laws to make public access to our public records surer, faster, and more comprehensive.

And one of the things I've tried to do in my first months in office is to give more Georgians - reporters and members of the general public alike - a closer look at how their government works.

After all, I have spent the better part of my adult life insisting that government be open... that government be accessible... and that government be held accountable to people who voted us into office.

The First Amendment rejects red tape, cover-up and double-speak.

But the fact is, no matter how good the teacher, how small the class, how focused on quality education the school may be none of this matters if we ignore the individual needs of our students.

We are all one - or at least we should be - and it is our job, our duty, and our great challenge to fight the voices of division and seek the salve of reconciliation.

Who's paying the million bucks? The insurance company. We've been trying for years to get the insurance industry to say to the gun industry, We won't insure you unless you have policies that will reduce the likelihood of guns falling into the wrong hands easily.

We've got activists all across the country like the members of the Million Mom March organization, some of their leaders are here tonight. We're phone banking congressional offices and pursuing editorial boards.

We're trying to publicize this one and make people realize that the gun industry can clean up its act and can operate in a way that can reduce the likelihood of guns killing police officers and other innocent people.

We should have a system of licensing and registration, we should treat firearms the same way that automobiles are treated so that people have to pass a safety test.

They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here.

The vast majority of Americans agree with us. We're doing everything that we can. We're advertising, right now we're on television with an advertisement running in the Washington area. We've got newspaper ads.

The gun dealer is not only paying these two police officers, but more importantly, the gun dealer has said he will never again sell more than one gun to a customer. This is exactly what we're trying to get the gun industry across the country to do.

The fight for sanity in our gun safety laws is not by any means over. In many ways it's just beginning.

Should we have background checks, waiting periods? To drive a car you have to pass a test that shows you know how to drive your car safely, you should have to do the same thing with guns.

Let me share some facts with you about the law in most of our country. California is in many ways a little different from the rest of the world, and California has better gun laws than many states, although California's need to be improved.

It's a tragedy, but with your support and your help we will wage this fight and we're going to win it.

If today is your typical day in America, 80 of our fellow citizens will die from gunfire. In the last two weeks, more Americans have died from gunfire here at home in the United States than in the entire war in Iraq since it started.

Every place in the country you should get a license that shows you know how to safely store it, keep it away from your children or grandchildren. You should have to license it so the police can trace it if it's used in a crime.

But there are 90 million gun owners in the United States. Only 3.5 million want the insurance and magazines and the various things you get for joining the NRA.