Paul Ryan Quotes

#1. What I'm concerned about is endless borrowing, which is going to compromise our economy not only today but in the future. Because we know the decisions we make right now really dramatically impact us in the future, and the debt is literally getting out of our control.

Paul Ryan

#2. Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions.

Paul Ryan

#3. Politics has become a blood sport that goes beyond just the person whose name is on the ballot.

Paul Ryan

#4. I see myself as more of a policy maker than a political leader.

Paul Ryan

#5. When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself.

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#6. We must promote upward mobility, starting with solutions that speak to our broken education system, broken immigration policy, and broken safety-net programs that foster dependency instead of helping people get back on their feet.

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#7. Big-government economics breeds crony capitalism. It's corrupt, anything but neutral, and a barrier to broad participation in prosperity.

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#8. When our opponents on the Left have no serious ideas of their own, they resort to emotional appeals that play up Americans' fears about the future.

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#9. If we didn't propose these reforms, we would not have proposed a budget that got the debt under control.

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#10. So, in Europe, they're cutting people's retirement and health benefits. And that's what we want to avoid from happening. They're raising taxes, entering a recession. That's the kind of economic program that President Obama has put in place.

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#11. Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life.

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#12. When Governor Romney asked me to join the ticket, I said, 'Let's get this done' - and that is exactly, what we're going to do.

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#13. President Obama's reckless defense cuts that are hanging over our cloud, hanging over the horizon could put almost 44,000 jobs at stake right here in Pennsylvania. we are not going to let that happen. You know why? Because No. 1, national defense is the first priority of the federal government.

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#14. Look, the president is elected to lead and to face the country's biggest challenges. The country's biggest challenge domestically speaking, no doubt about it, is a debt crisis, and I'm really hoping that he is going to give us a budget that tackles this debt crisis.

Paul Ryan

#15. Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature, as if we're some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It's a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy. Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits.

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#16. To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

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#17. None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers - a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.

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#18. Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis. We cannot deny it; instead we must, as Americans, confront it responsibly. And that is exactly what Republicans pledge to do.

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#19. On July 4th, we renew our commitment to the American Idea-the belief that all men are created equal. We read the Declaration. We tell our kids the history. We remember those who died to protect our country. And along the way, we remind ourselves of why we love it.

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#20. We believe a renewed commitment to limited government will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for all people, of every background, to succeed and prosper. Under this approach, the spirit of initiative - not political clout - determines who succeeds.

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#21. Hiding spending does not reduce spending.

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#22. A free economy and strong communities honor the dignity of every person, rewarding effort with justice, promoting upward mobility, and building solidarity among citizens.

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#23. A bold reform agenda is our moral obligation. If we make the case effectively and win this November, then we will have the moral authority to enact the kind of fundamental reforms America has not seen since Ronald Reagan's first year.

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#24. I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.

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#25. I voted to send people to war.

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#26. We're saying no changes for Medicare for people above the age of 55. And in order to keep the promise to current seniors who've already retired and organized their lives around this program, you have to reform it for the next generation.

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#27. That's what we do in this country. That's the American Dream. That's freedom, and I'll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.

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#28. What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

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#29. PACs corrupt the system. They handle vast amounts of money and the money corrupts.

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#30. I live on the same block where I grew up. We belong to the same parish where I was baptized. Janesville is that kind of place.

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#31. It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that's left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind.

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#32. Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere.

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#33. We must solve the problem in health care by curbing out-of-control costs that erode paychecks for working families and push quality coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.

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#34. Are we interested in treating the symptoms of poverty and economic stagnation through income redistribution and class warfare, or do we want to go at the root causes of poverty and economic stagnation by promoting pro-growth policies that promote prosperity?

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#35. We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles.

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#36. Our rights come from nature and God, not government.

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#37. When it comes to jobs, President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years look like good old days. If we fired Jimmy Carter then, why would we rehire Barack Obama now?

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#38. The work ahead will be hard. These times demand the best of us - all of us, but we can do this. Together, we can do this. We can get this country working again. We can get this economy growing again. We can make the safety net safe again. We can do this.

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#39. We are looking for bipartisan solutions not partisan rhetoric.

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#40. Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

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#41. Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you.

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#42. Republicans have offered dozens of comprehensive healthcare plans many of which achieve comprehensive healthcare reform without breaking what's working in healthcare. We want to fix what's broken in healthcare.

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#43. Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.

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#44. I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old - and I know that we are ready.

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#45. Throughout human history, the American Idea has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.

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#46. While I respect the professionals at the FBI, this announcement defies explanation. No one should be above the law.

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#47. The problem with our deficit is not because Americans are taxed too little. The problem with the deficit is because Washington spends too much money. We have got to stop spending money we don't have.

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#48. The tax code is 10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news.

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#49. When you take a look at the problems our country is facing, debt is No. 1. The math is downright scary and the credit markets aren't going to keep on giving us cheap rates.

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#50. By failing seriously to confront the most predicable economic crisis in our nation's history, the President's policies are committing us and our children to a diminished future.

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#51. Every now and then, President Obama sorta drops his veil. He's less coy about his philosophy, he sort of reveals his true governing philosophy, what he really believes.

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#52. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.

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#53. I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.

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#54. We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility.

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#55. College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

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#56. It's no coincidence that trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high.

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#57. You can't fix a fundamentally broken law; you've got to replace it. That's why Congress can't save Obamacare with a few tweaks, despite what its defenders say. No quick fix can correct the main flaw: The law takes power away from patients and hands it to bureaucrats ...

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#58. Our two party platforms were emphatic about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel. For the Obama administration to remove this language from the Democratic Party platform drives a wedge into one of the few issues that our two parties agreed on.

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#59. The rate of return on Social Security for people nearing retirement is about 1.5 percent. By the time young children like mine are ready to retire, that rate of return will be a negative percentage.

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#60. And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them.

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#61. Elections have consequences. And I fundamentally believe - this is my personal opinion, I know it's a slightly partisan thing to say - to really do what we think needs to be done, we're going to have to win some elections.

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#62. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our Commander-in-Chief, what we heard today was a political broadside from our Campaigner-in-Chief.

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#63. What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted - it was borrowed, spent, and wasted.

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#64. We do not have a functioning market in the true sense of the word in health care. That's a layer of transparency that's sorely needed in America.

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#65. We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead.

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#66. The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

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#67. We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility.

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#68. I think you can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think you can oppose the president on some issue that you fundamentally disagree with, but also work with the other party on issues you do agree with.

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#69. You're going to hear a lot from President Obama and yes, from Joe Biden, you're hearing a little bit about Medicare these days. What they will not tell you is they turned Medicare into a piggybank to fund 'Obamacare.' They took $716 billion dollars to pay for the 'Obamacare' program.

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#70. Either we have the government forcing us and telling us what we have to do, where we have to do it and how much we have to pay for it or we put ourselves in charge - we as consumers, as patients.

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#71. We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.

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#72. If borrowing and spending all this money led to more jobs than we would be at full employment already.

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#73. Americans are better off in a dynamic, free-enterprise-based economy that fosters economic growth, opportunity and upward mobility instead of a stagnant, government-directed economy that stifles job creation and fosters government dependency.

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#74. If you're running for president, you've got to do a lot of things to line up a candidacy. I've not done any of those things. It's not my plan. My plan is to be a good chairman of the House Budget Committee and fight for the fiscal sanity of this nation.

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#75. With all their attack ads, the President is just throwing away money ... and he's pretty experienced at that.

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#76. Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups.

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#77. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it.

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#78. I'm as pro-life as a person gets. You're not going to have a truce.

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#79. That's the real secret to job creation - not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.

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#80. Look, only in Washington is not raising taxes considered a tax cut. Nobody's getting a tax cut here. We're not cutting taxes. We're preventing tax increases from occurring.

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#81. Only by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be free, and only a free person can make responsible choices - between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking.

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#82. President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

Paul Ryan

#83. I tend to avoid the shows that focus on politics, just to get a break from it all, i tried watching the first couple episodes of 'House of Cards,' but I thought it was way over the top. Members of Congress aren't anything like Frank Underwood. Most of us are far less interesting.

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#84. We don't have a tax revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem in Washington.

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#85. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.

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#86. There is a consensus of willing leaders from both parties coalescing around the right way forward in health care. Reform should address government-imposed inequities and barriers to true choice and competition.

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#87. We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.

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#88. I don't have the time. It would take me too long to go through all of the math.

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#89. Now it's a war on women; tomorrow it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that.

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#90. Here's the problem if you keep raising tax rates: You slow down economic growth.

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#91. I never asked for stimulus.

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#92. If you're going to criticize, you should propose,

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#93. I'm very proud of my pro-life record, and I've always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life.

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#94. Ultimately, the law will collapse under its own weight. Until then, we have to start building a better health care system in its place. And we need to start with a new principle: Put the patient in the driver's seat. That's how we can build a healthy economy.

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#95. I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.

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#96. Take a moment to imagine a world led by China or Russia. So we must lead.

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#97. Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It's absolutely unacceptable.

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#98. Hope and change? We're not doing that anymore. They're doing attack and blame. And so, I just think people are going to see through this. They want real leadership. They want us to get this country on the right track.

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#99. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.

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#100. I've been really clear about this. If you want to be president, you should run for president. We should select our nominee from among the people who are running for president. Clear and simple. So no, I am not going to be the president. I am not going to be the nominee.

Paul Ryan