Jack Abramoff quotes:

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

I believe in God.

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.

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 asking people to feel sorry for me.

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.

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.

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.'

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 fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser - and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

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

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.

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.

Human beings are weak.

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

Congress doesn't hate Congress.

Class envy is dangerous.

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

I'm not exactly the endorsement people are seeking.

Many of my e-mails have been maliciously taken out of context, another effort by those assaulting my career.

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

If you chose to serve in Congress or on a congressional staff, you should be barred for life from working for any company, organization, or association which lobbies the federal government.

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

I'm trying to avail myself of the various technologies to get the message that Washington needs to be cleaned up, that the system that's in place is not what's beneficial in the country.

I might dream, but I am no dreamer.

I don't pay much attention to sports.

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.

A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, and a libertarian is a conservative who's been indicted.

Washington's a dangerous place.

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

The reason there are tens of thousands of lobbyists is because the ever-expanding federal government creates ever-increasing opportunities for abuse. The more the federal government does, the more lobbyists there will be to protect special interests at the expense of the common interest.

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.

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.

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

The lure of post-public service lobbying employment needs to be eliminated.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Democrats don't react the same way Republicans do, because they are not forced to react the same way Republicans are forced to react. They get to be as corrupt as, basically, they want, and just ignore it.

I mean, money is a tool.

I'm not trying to become popular.

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

All I have, really, is my creativity.

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

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

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.

You can't beat somebody with nobody.

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

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.

I'm a hypercompetitive individual.

I'm an aggressive person.

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

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