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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I was fortunate to be born at the right time and to be in the right place when the Women's Movement came alive. So many things were wrong with the way life was ordered in the '70s. In many states, women didn't serve on juries, to take just one example, and there were so many jobs that were off limits to women. People began to realize there was something wrong about that and women should be free to aspire and achieve just as men are. So I had legal education and I could use that education to help move this movement for change, for allowing women to realize their full potential, help move that along. So it was that ten years of my life that I devoted to litigating cases about -- I don't say women's rights -- I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women. I was tremendously fortunate to be able to participate in that movement for change.
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Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor of New York City
Rudolph Giuliani: I read that book when it first came out. I must have been a high school student then. That was a very inspirational book for me, because it concentrated on political leaders acting like leaders and doing things that were unpopular at which they put their career at risk because of principle. And, I can remember saying many, many times over the course of the last 40 or 50 years, when people weren't doing that, "I guess they don't want a chapter in Profiles in Courage." I mean, the reality is that it really does define the highest form of political leadership, which is where your principles conflict with something that might be the best thing for you to do politically. And Profiles in Courage is about those who chose to do the thing they believed was the principled thing.
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Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor of New York City
Rudolph Giuliani: We got a tremendous number of people off welfare and into work, but it wasn't a short time. It was a six or seven-year period. And the number is about 700,000 people that were removed from the welfare rolls. And the last couple of years, we were averaging finding jobs for about 100,000 people each year. So it wasn't just getting them off welfare, it was getting them off welfare and getting them into work. And it was by explaining the value of work and challenging the notion that it was kinder and better to put people on welfare than to keep people in the work force, because I didn't accept the idea that you were really helping people by putting them on welfare. You really help people when you help them to stay self-sufficient, or you lead them to self-sufficiency. That's really compassion. That's really caring, that's really worrying about a person as a person rather than as a statistic. And I found that social philosophy in New York for 15-20 years to be very, very damaging to the work ethic. The idea that you would sign people up for welfare, you would encourage people to be on welfare, you would make welfare user-friendly, and then, all of a sudden, you would see a deterioration of the work ethic. Well of course you would. I mean, the idea is to take welfare officers and make them employment officers. I'm going to help my friend by finding my friend a job, not by giving my friend a sense of somebody else can take care of you for the rest of your life, unless that is really necessary because of disability, medical problem, mental issues, whatever.
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Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor of New York City
There was a knee-jerk reaction that you're going to help people more by putting the maximum people on welfare. But I would stand up to that and say, "No, that's not right. You don't care about people as much as I do, because what I want to do is find them a job." I want to work harder on this problem than just signing them up for a welfare check. I want to work with them to keep their job. Get another job if they have lost their work ethic, reestablish it for them, help reestablish it for them, so then I can leave them with a chance to take care of the rest of their life by being self-sufficient, as opposed to leaving them maybe in many cases in a certain sense disabled.
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