Top 60 J. C. Watts Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking.”

— J. C. Watts

Featured in: Integrity Quotes, Accountability Quotes, Duty Quotes, Actions Speak Louder Than Words Quotes

2. “It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.”

— J. C. Watts

3. “Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.”

— J. C. Watts

4. “Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It’s not hard. Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.”

— J. C. Watts

5. “Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn’t be related.”

— J. C. Watts

6. “I’m secure in who I am. I don’t need the validation of those that would say, you have to be a certain thing in order to be accepted. I’m comfortable going against the grain if I need to.”

— J. C. Watts

7. “Individual responsibility, hard work, paying attention in school, faith, family all these things are important.”

— J. C. Watts

8. “My father taught that the only helping hand you’re ever going to be able to rely on is the one at the end of your sleeve.”

— J. C. Watts

9. “We have seen the Democrat solution to an energy crisis; it’s called California.”

— J. C. Watts

10. “There is a direct correlation between education, stable families and incarceration and crime.”

— J. C. Watts

11. “When it comes to the American dream, no one has a corner on the market. All of us have an equal chance to share in that dream.”

— J. C. Watts

12. “Good policy makes good politics and what I’ve done has been good politics.”

— J. C. Watts

13. “You take a poor black child. Give him a good education, tell him he’s somebody, that God didn’t create junk when he created him, and that black child will create his own affirmative action.”

— J. C. Watts

14. “The measure of a man is not how great his faith is, but how great his love is. We must not let government programs disconnect our souls from each other.”

— J. C. Watts

15. “The American dream does not happen by asking Americans to accept what’s immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance.”

— J. C. Watts

16. “Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school.”

— J. C. Watts

17. “Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn’t do this out of compassion or guilt. It’s done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.”

— J. C. Watts

18. “I’m looking forward to the day when America will mature to the point that we are a color-blind society. I’m not so sure that in politics that will ever be reality, because politics has a way of separating us based on skin color.”

— J. C. Watts

19. “In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts – in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma – would someday be called Congressman.”

— J. C. Watts

20. “I embrace my blackness, just as I do my conservatism and my Christianity, but I don’t want to be defined or pigeonholed by any one of the many elements that make up my character.”

— J. C. Watts

21. “My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.”

— J. C. Watts

22. “I’m not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one’s skin color or one’s gender, I think it should be done based on one’s need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.”

— J. C. Watts

23. “There can’t be opportunity or jobs without investment and profit.”

— J. C. Watts

24. “My work in the House of Representatives, at this time in my life, is completed. It is time to return home.”

— J. C. Watts

25. “I believe government should be loyal to parents, teachers and children.”

— J. C. Watts

26. “As an Oklahoma quarterback, you learn to perform under pressure.”

— J. C. Watts

27. “I don’t know if anybody has moved up the ladder more quickly than I have.”

— J. C. Watts

28. “I think the Republican Party should be a pro-life party. I am pro-life. I do not apologize for that. On the flip side of that coin, the Republican Party has been big enough to allow pro-choice advocates to be heard.”

— J. C. Watts

29. “Having a Republican candidate speak at the NAACP convention is like trying to build a house starting at the roof. If you don’t have a foundation, the roof isn’t going to stand.”

— J. C. Watts

30. “You always hear ‘black Republican,’ but you never hear ‘white Democrat.’ We’ve got to get beyond the labels and stereotypes. Other people have hang-ups about it. I don’t.”

— J. C. Watts

31. “To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet.”

— J. C. Watts

32. “I think that anybody that stays in school, gets good grades, pays the price, I think we are wealthy enough in the public and the private sector in America to make sure that every child in America that wants to continue their education, they should be able to do that.”

— J. C. Watts

33. “The more I ponder some of the boneheaded decisions GOP candidates have made of late, I can’t bring myself to believe that they are serious about capturing more than about 8 percent of the black vote.”

— J. C. Watts

34. “Well, Mark, I led the charge for five or six years to get reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I was chairman of an organization called ‘FM Policy Focus.’ What we were saying was, if there was blip in the housing market, Fannie and Freddie would destabilize the greatest economy in the world.”

— J. C. Watts

35. “I never got into politics for it to be a career.”

— J. C. Watts

36. “I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character – not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don’t think the political process could actually handle that.”

— J. C. Watts

37. “There’s a whole lot more to the African-American community than entertainment and sports.”

— J. C. Watts

38. “I do think, however, that there’s a very diverse point of view in the African-American community. There’s a lot of different voices that need to be heard. I don’t claim and pretend to know the thoughts and opinions and ideas of all African-Americans.”

— J. C. Watts

39. “I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you’re a Democrat. Sometimes that’s good, obviously, and sometimes that’s obviously bad. But in the news business, there’s no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.”

— J. C. Watts

40. “I still get to preach 14, 15 times a year. But you have to make a living.”

— J. C. Watts

41. “I like to call the ethos I grew up with ‘Oklahoma values.’ But you’d be just as accurate if you said ‘American values.’ Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that’s American.”

— J. C. Watts

42. “Republicans think that the NAACP is the only voice in the black community. It is a voice in the black community. But it’s not the only voice.”

— J. C. Watts

43. “Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself.”

— J. C. Watts

44. “If a 25-year old can’t read and write and he or she isn’t gaining marketable skills, it doesn’t matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House. His or her future will be bleak.”

— J. C. Watts

45. “I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television’s most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.”

— J. C. Watts

46. “For longer than I’ve been involved in the political process, the Republican establishment has claimed to want to provide an alternative for the black community, yet party elite refuse to show up for the game.”

— J. C. Watts

47. “In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican, with God as my witness, not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That’s a good thing.”

— J. C. Watts

48. “Americans are hungry for a discussion on policy solutions to the problems in their communities that work.”

— J. C. Watts

49. “I have often said one of the reasons more blacks don’t support Republicans is because they don’t trust the GOP establishment.”

— J. C. Watts

50. “We need to remember that politics is all about people, not programs. We shouldn’t want to take the humanness out of the political arena.”

— J. C. Watts