Jack Abramoff Quotes

As a lobbyist, I was completely against term limits, and I know a lot of people are against term limits, and I was one of the leaders, because why? As a lobbyist, once you buy a congressional office, you don't have to re-buy that office in six years, right?

Some issues lend themselves to grassroots campaigns - homeschooling works well - but others require contrivance and connivance to whip up support. Often, lobbyists will hire vendors to dispatch blast emails and robocalls in the hopes of bombarding Congressional offices with citizen fury.

I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying.

Words will not be able to ever express how sorry I am for this, and I have profound regret and sorrow for the multitude of mistakes and harm I have caused.

A senator will come off Capitol Hill and they'll be barred from two years from lobbying in the Senate. So they'll pick the phone up and they'll call their buddy, the senator, their old buddies, and they'll say, 'Listen, I'm here at this law firm now. I can't lobby you, but my new partner, Jack, can lobby you.'

It's very difficult for felons to live in society.

You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fundraising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fundraiser. And have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

Access is vital in lobbying. If you can't get in your door, you can't make your case.

If you make the choice to serve the public, public service, then serve the public, not yourself.

As a result, I've been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend.

Well, I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal.

In Hollywood, they put the knife in your front; in D.C., they put it in your back. I found far fewer duplicitous people in Hollywood.

In my religion it's actually better to know you're doing wrong and try to improve that wrong than to think philosophically that what you're doing is right and in fact it is wrong.

Prisoners do different things. Some write, some read. Some engage in athletic events and working out and some do all of that. Some get involved in the religious groups that they're part of. Some get involved in hobbies that are permitted in prison. There are plenty of ways to stay busy. You're never going to survive in prison unless you start getting busy.

If I read the articles about me, and I didn't know me, I would think I was Satan.

As a lobbyist, I thought it only natural and right that my clients should reward those members who saved them such substantial sums with generous contributions. This quid pro quo became one of hallmarks of our lobbying efforts.

In the past few years I have begun the process of becoming a new man.

I am much chastened and profoundly remorseful. I can only hope that the Almighty and those whom I have wronged will forgive me my trespasses.

I'm not a complete libertarian. There is a proper role in some areas of the government to have rules and regulations - I'm not an anarchist.

They realize that spending millions to save billions is just good business.

I'm not exactly the endorsement people are seeking.

I'm a human being. I'm not perfect.

I'm a hypercompetitive individual.

I'm an aggressive person.

I'm not asking people to feel sorry for me.

All I have, really, is my creativity.

Everybody's a complex person. Everybody. Everybody's nuanced.

Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

Human beings are weak.

I can't afford to be a member of a golf course.

I don't pay much attention to sports.

I can't vote again ever, so political party is not a relevant thing for me.

Well, I don't think most Americans are playing the super-PAC game. I think what you have is elites on both sides playing the super-PAC game.

I'm capable of making $44 million. I know I'm intellectually capable of finding a series of things and making hundreds of millions. I have to get there and do it. Carefully. Legally.

I think what I'm trying to do, reform-wise, is completely consistent with conservative philosophy. It may not be consistent with some so-called conservatives who live in Washington and make their living like I used to.

Lobbying is not a bad thing. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't have lobbyists or we shouldn't have lobbying to petition our government. It's in the Constitution, and it's something that should be honorable and good.

No one wants a domain with their name on it owned by somebody else.

One of my personality defects, perhaps, is that I'm rather ADD, and I work on a bunch of things at once.

The hope in radio is to build an audience over a number of years, a slow build to see if something works.

Washington's a dangerous place.

I'm not trying to become popular.

All I want is for people not to see me as this cartoon monster.

Being somebody who wants to be religious doesn't make me perfect and doesn't make me necessarily any better than anybody else. It maybe makes me better than I would have been if I didn't have that level.

I got into lobbying kind of against my will at first. I frankly didn't want to be a lobbyist, but I realized that in lobbying I could do things politically that were interesting to me and do some what I thought would be good. I'm not sure it all turned out like that, but at least that was some of the initial thinking.

In the past two years, I've started the process of becoming a new man. I am much chastened and profoundly remorseful over the reckless and hurtful things I have done in my life, especially those which have brought me before you today.

I mean, money is a tool.

I support myself by public speaking and trying to work on as many appropriate and legitimate ventures as I can.

I think the American people deserve somebody telling them what is really happening in Washington.

I try to avoid saying anything positive about any presidential candidate for fear that if I actually like them then I will kill their campaign.

You can't beat somebody with nobody.