Jesse Helms Quotations

I was with some Vietnamese recently, and some of them were smoking two cigarettes at the same time. That's the kind of customers we need!

I want our government to encourage and protect freedom as well as our traditions of faith and family.

What I am suggesting is hard work and it can be slow work, but the rewards are well worth it.

Such schemes take money from people who can least afford to spend it to support an unneeded bureaucracy that eats money people thought they were providing for education.

It still surprises me when I find something in any North Carolina newspaper that isn't mad at me about something.

The challenge is always before us. Whenever we lose sight of the principles that mattered to our founders we run into trouble.

America must be the moral leader. It is not enough to have power. Power must be used to protect freedom and give all people hope for the opportunity to see the fruit of their own labor.

Conservatism is a hard choice for a society that has become accustomed to big government and big entitlements promoted by liberals.

I became a Republican when a very wise young lady asked me how I could remain a Democrat when I didn't agree with what they stood for and did agree with what the Republicans supported.

This is an area where North Carolina does excel. I have known more colorful North Carolina political figures than I have colorless ones.

We can live our own lives in a way that does not bring reproach on the principles we claim to support.

The interests of the United States are better served by demanding reform and seeing that reform takes place than by removing our influence from the UN.

Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard.

The big secret to winning elections is to get more votes than your opponent. My friend Representative Robin Hayes is a good example to study.

It has become more acceptable to describe yourself as a conservative, but not everyone who uses that term about themselves really is truly conservative.

That is why I fought against abortion and that is why if I were still in the Senate I would be doing everything I could to defend the sanctity of marriage.

We have to be a state where business is welcome and jobs are created. We have to demand value for what is spent and we need to continue to resist a lottery.

I want our young people to believe as we did that there is no goal too high to reach if they are willing to work.

It may surprise people to know that I advocate the reform of the United Nations, not its abolishment.

I have tried at every point to seek God's wisdom on the decisions I made, and I made it my business to speak up on behalf of the things God tells us are important to Him.

There was no Congressional Club for my first campaign. There was no organized state group of Young Republicans, but there was a dedicated core of young people who volunteered to do anything my campaign needed.

In subsequent years the groups you named had important roles in educating people about the real issues in Washington and Raleigh, and within the Democratic Party.

I worked in the media from the late 30's through the early 70's. Politics in general became more liberal both nationally and within the state as the years passed.

It had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high-risk populations, ... I was wrong.

As you may know, I've just completed my memoir for Random House. Many of the questions you've asked are discussed at length in there.

If the president does so, the treaty will effectively be dead, ... The decision, you see, is the president's and the president's alone.

I do not intend to allow the Senate to rubber-stamp the president's plan to reward the Chinese Communists.

If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 apostles.

Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING, and the MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior.

To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.

They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.

Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands.

I fight for what I believe. If you are not willing to stand up for what you believe, your beliefs are not strong enough.

Within my own lifetime, I have seen the most ferocious assaults on Christian faith and morals; first on the part of the intellectual community, and then on the part of the government... the federal government has not even tried to conceal its hostility to religion.

The Lord did not make me impossible of error. All I've had to offer you is the total dedication in serving you as best I know how. And I've always leveled with you, and always will, knowing full well that everyone will not agree with me.

This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Our constituency aren't the type of people to be on the Internet.

It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease

The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights.

The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.

Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.

I don't care what the New York Times says about me, and no one I care about cares what the New York Times says about me.

All I know is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious.

There is a big difference between The Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races in an erotic pose on a marble table top.

We are now considering legislation based on statistics that include name-calling at public rallies as crimes. Are we going on to the school yards of this country and when two kids get angry with each other and call each other names -- what are we going to do, cart them over to the reformatory or add them to the list of 'hate crimes' perpetrators? This is ridiculous.

If you want to call me a bigot, fine.

On your principles, you should never yield; you should be prepared to be defeated. Nobody likes to be defeated, but you should let everybody know in the most articulate and thoughtful and civil way you can (you don't go out and pick fights with people) that in certain matters that you define as matters of principle you will not budge, you cannot yield, you will not compromise. If you don't have the votes or the winning argument, then you stand to be defeated and rolled over, and you'll just have to come back another day.

I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners, or niggers.

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.

Why build a zoo when we can just put up a fence around Chapel Hill?

Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?