James McGreevey Quotes

• When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed that government could help make our lives better, that public service was a calling and that citizenship demanded responsibilities. There was a greater good.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idealism, Citizenship

• When you’re a young kid and you’re gay, you’re out there on your own. And you’re trying to figure this thing out. And your parents typically aren’t gay.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gay, Figure

• You know for many elected officials they all started in the same place. You know marriage is between a man and a woman, but they understand that they are moving inevitably, catching up to the American public.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Officials, Place

• I’ve never been much for self-revelation. In two decades of public life, I always approached the limelight with extreme caution. Not that I kept my personal life off-limits; rather, the personal life I put on display was a blend of fact and fiction.

  James McGreevey

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  Tags in Extreme, Decades

• Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Closet

• More than anything else I recall being, or trying very deliberately to be, a perfect child. Not a Goody Two-shoes, but a kid who did good, who worked hard and met every expectation. I strove to achieve in the excessive way that psychotherapists tend to regard with concern.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Strove, Deliberately

• No relief was forthcoming from my then-Catholic faith, which said the practice of homosexuality was a ‘mortal sin’ subject to damnation.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sin, Faith

• Of all my false identities, the strategies in my campaign to be accepted, being a sworn Republican is the hardest to explain. In my later political life, I can only be described as a Kennedy Democrat, eager to pursue equitable treatment for the least fortunate.

  James McGreevey

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  Tags in Accepted, Pursue

• The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

  James McGreevey

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  Tags in Liberties, Responsible

• Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ambivalent, Confused

• We need to seek wise leaders who will seek common ground among Americans instead of dividing us further for political gain. As citizens, we must embrace those who embrace ideas, thoughtfulness, civility and kindness to others no matter what their political beliefs.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Further, Citizens

• When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier – as though, after decades in the public eye, they’d suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Shots, Searching

• I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts – protecting them, I thought, from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics, if not in my soul. The true me, my spiritual core, slipped further and further from reach.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Core, Further

• I knew I was different when I was about six years of age but I just knew that I wasn’t like everybody else. I mean I wasn’t like the other kids. I didn’t know what that was. But I guess it was when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I’m like, ‘Hey, something’s wrong here.’

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Different, Six

• I realized that I had screwed up my life living different parts of my life in different places. I wasn’t whole. I wasn’t integrated. I wasn’t a complete person. And after that, came out, spent some time at a psychiatric hospital.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Screwed, Complete

• I think – I think you have a conscience growing up in a loving family with a nurturing community. And I think what happens is, and that’s part of the problem of being in the closet which is a very sick place. I mean it’s self loathing. It’s self denial. And you keep that separate.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Closet

• I’m enjoying prison ministry, particularly with the women in Hudson County Jail who have suffered tremendously in their lives.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Suffered, Enjoying

• I’m on the board of a national group called Faith in America. It’s designed to fight religious-based bigotry.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in National, Called

• At a point in every person’s life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one’s soul and decide one’s unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Deeply, Decide

• At different points in my life, I had grappled with the idea of going into the priesthood – in high school or law school. Where it ends, I’m not quite sure. Perhaps it ends with death, grappling with one’s spirituality.

  James McGreevey

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Points

James McGreevey (40)

Birth:	6th August, 1957
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Politician

About

James Edward "Jim" McGreevey was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He is an American Democratic politician. He served as the 52nd Governor of New Jersey from 2002 until his resignation in 2004. He served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1990 to 1992, as the Mayor of Woodbridge Township from 1991 to 2002 and in the New Jersey Senate from 1994 to 1998. He earned a BA degree from Columbia University in 1978. He earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1981 and a MA degree in education from Harvard University in 1982. He also attended a diploma program in law at the London School of Economics. He attended the General Theological Seminary in New York City to obtain his Master of Divinity degree, a requirement to becoming an Episcopal priest.

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