Top 50 Kevin de Leon Quotes

I would never call our country the welfare system for Mexico.

Recycling more plastics can help local businesses and expand jobs while supporting the goals of sustainability.

Lawmakers must stand up for companies that choose public safety over profit margins.

I am not delusional. Listen, I am not naive to the fact that people are not shouting my name all over the state of California.

Our State Senate must lead by example, restore trust and transparency, stop sweeping workplace misconduct under the rug, and do everything we can to protect women who work in and around the Capitol.

It is erroneous and profoundly irresponsible to suggest that up to three million undocumented immigrants living in America are dangerous criminals.

Drafting local police into Trump’s immigration crackdown undermines public safety and is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.

We’re planting trees to break up the concrete jungle. We’re building public transportation and affordable housing.

While we need to provide leadership and stability to the world, we should do that through diplomacy.

I want you to know that California is your sanctuary. We will always be a place where you can be whoever you are and become whoever you dream of being. California will always stand up for you. That’s a principle that’s bigger than partisanship, more powerful than any president.

Thanks to policies mandating clean energy development, California’s electric grid is one of the least carbon-intensive in the world.

I believe strongly that when you have political capital, you should use it in a manner that helps improve the human condition. You shouldn’t just compile power and hold onto power for power’s sake.

Yes, we absolutely need to eliminate the single-use plastic bag, but we don’t have to eliminate the jobs of hardworking Californians to accomplish this goal.

Police chiefs know a thing or two about public safety.

I try to deal with the poverty gap – to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

Democrats are very good at governing. When it comes to messaging, I’m not too sure about.

No corner of our society has been left unscathed by the horrors of gun violence. To end it, we’ll need to bring together the best from each corner, taking what works from government, the private sector, and our local communities and crafting common-sense solutions to gun violence.

Hollywood is here to stay, and we have to keep the momentum going.

President Trump’s threat to weaponize federal funding is not only unconstitutional but emblematic of the cruelty he seeks to impose on our most vulnerable communities.

I worry about civil-rights activists being targeted as black-identity extremists. I worry about the government saying, ‘I don’t like this progressive blogger’ and subjecting them to scrutiny.

I’m not into political gamesmanship.

I grew up in the streets of San Diego, and I love this city dearly. I love this city. San Diego is my home. Even though I represent Los Angeles, this is my home.

If I’ve learned one thing as a state leader, it’s that California will never fulfill its truest potential if we wait for Washington to change on its own.

I wouldn’t have voted for the war in Iraq, which has cost us trillions we could have been spending on a carbon-free economy, affordable college, and single-payer health care.

California is the greatest beacon of opportunity the world has ever known. But we didn’t get here through years of political seniority – we built it through acts of audacity.

Dependence on oil from volatile foreign markets undermines our economic security and threatens our national security. Moreover, that addiction is producing toxic air and a public-health epidemic.

You’ve got to lead from a position of strength.

My mother, Carmen, cleaned houses and took care of elderly people.

I wouldn’t have supported invoking Taft-Hartley to help George Bush end a strike.

I didn’t know how to do a press release, so I’d call the local Assembly member and say, ‘Hey, can you fax me one of your press releases?’ ‘Which one?’ ‘Any one.’

If we do high-speed rail, the governor has to be intelligent and invest the dollars at the ‘bookends’ – San Francisco and Los Angeles.

When people see the healthful impact this is having and all the hard hats constructing, their minds may change about high-speed rail.

Cap and trade is an important tool in California’s climate policy portfolio. It sends a price signal to industries to reduce their carbon pollution while generating billions of dollars in revenue for investments in clean transportation and direct pollution reduction.

We speak truth to power, and we’ve never been fooled into believing Donald Trump ‘can be a good president.’

There’s always more employers can do to protect their employees.

I don’t like to move abstract theoretical policies that, on a white paper, sound good. If I wanted to do that, I’d be a professor.

In California, we celebrate our diversity. We celebrate who we are because we’re proud of who we are; we’re proud of where our families come from.

It’s incumbent on all of us to remember our history and not repeat our past sins.

Equity and economic justice are now hardwired into all of our climate policies.

When I was elected for the first time in ’06 I’d never been elected to any body. City councils, school board, community college boards, trustee, water district trustee, class president, ASB president, senior class president – nothing. I was never elected to anything in my life.

The D.C. playbook is obsolete. It’s time for the people of California to bring the agenda to Washington, not the other way around.

What we have done dramatically in California is lead the entire nation. For example, we have created more jobs in clean energy in California than there are coal-mining jobs in all of America.

I believe that every family – it doesn’t make a difference who you are or where you come from – deserves to have quality healthcare. It is a universal right. It’s not the exclusive privilege of the elite and the wealthy.

There isn’t enough renewable fuel in the world to crack our growing addiction to foreign oil. We need to decrease miles driven and increase engine efficiency.

Unlike Washington, the California legislature has proved that cooperation is both possible and essential to successful policymaking, while stubborn absolutism will have you trailing head lice in popularity polls.

The days of Democrats biding our time, biting our tongue, and triangulating at the margins are over.

Clean air shouldn’t be a privilege dictated by where you can afford to live but a right to which we are all entitled.

Many foreign students take their California degrees back to their home countries. They become entrepreneurs that develop products that they sell back to us.

I don’t believe other states should be in the business of luring production out of California. We’ve made it clear that no one is going to out-compete California.

California serves as our nation’s cutting edge on many fronts.