Notable Quotes
| Person | Quote |
| House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California | "The president said he's going to lead the investigation into what went wrong. He needs to look only in the mirror." |
| Former first lady Barbara Bush | "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." |
| Kanye West on an NBC telethon for Hurricane Katrina survivors | "George
Bush doesn't care about black people." |
| Bush | "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. The good news is and it's hard for some to see it now that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house he's lost his entire house there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) |
| FEMA Chief Brown | 'Things are going relatively well' |
| FEMA Chief Brown | "Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," |
| Condy Rice | "Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race," |
| Rush Limbaugh | "Why don't they afford cars?" |
| Rush Limbaugh | "The libs are able to get those same people to the polls to vote on election day. Apparently it wasn't important enough to evacuate them to save their lives. The hypocrasy is stunning" |
| Repent America director Michael Marcavage | "Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," |
| Bill O'Reilly | "many, many, many hurricane victims that failed to evacuate are drug-addicted thugs" |
| Bush 2001 | "My administration's climate change policy will be science based" |
| Chertoff (Director of Homeland Security) | "New Orleans dodged the bullet". |
| Bush | "I don't think anyone anticipated a breach of the levee" |
| Broussard | "We have been abandoned by our country". |
| Bush | "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" |
| Various Republican officials | "This is not the time to be playing a blame game" |
| Jim Pinkerton (Fox "News") | Accuses survivors of "whining all the time on TV to get more federal money." Pinkerton also accused the media of directing too much blame for the botched response to Hurricane Katrina at the federal government while "absolv [ing] ... the local populace." |
| John Kerry | "Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' " |
| Bush to Pelosi | "What didn't go right?" This was not well reported. See here. |
| John Kerry | "This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed and beyond that a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful," |
| Ray Nagin (Mayor) | "Now that the storm is over, we have a city without drugs and violence, and we intend to keep it that way." |
| Michael Brown | Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." |
| Tom Delay | To three young evacuees from New Orleans: "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" |
| Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) | "I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." |
| CNN's Wolf Blitzer | "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." |
| Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) | "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." |
| Bush | "I believe the town where I used to come from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to." |
| Chertoff | "I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." |
| Brown | "We just learned of the convention center we being the federal government today." |
| Ted Koppel | "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today." |
| Laura Bush | "I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school." |
| GOP strategist Jack Burkman | "I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen." |
| House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) | "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." |
| Pat Robertson | "Judge Roberts can, maybe, you know, be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good." |
| Bush | "Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people." |
| Brown | "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans." |
| Brown | "I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word 'unrest' means that people are beginning to riot or, you know, theyre banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that." |
| Brown's Resume on FEMA web site: | "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University" (he was only a student there) |
| Bush on rebuilding | "My thoughts are, we're going to get somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to rebuilding cities." |
| Bush 6 Sept | "So please give cash money to organizations that are directly involved in helping save lives save the life who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina." |
| Bush | Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the course of the next few weeks. Don't buy gas if you don't need it." |
| Brown after being relieved from managing Katrina | "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep." |