Paul Ryan quotes - page 3

Paul Ryan is an American politician and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A key member of the Republican Party, he played a significant role in shaping major legislative policies, especially around the federal budget and tax reform. He is known for his fiscal conservatism and emphasis on limited government. Here are 143 of his quotes:

But I also see a problem where a lot of people don't believe in the American idea anymore. The condition of your birth doesn't determine the outcome of your life. This is America, you can make it. You work hard, play by the rules, you can rise, you can do well. That's what we're taught, that's what we believe, that's what we think of as America. Problem is, there are just generations of people in this country who do not think that.

Paul Ryan

This whole thing is a big gamble, but it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over. I personally give this three to six months to find out.

Paul Ryan

This law, by and large, extends the same kind of crime-fighting tools we apply to gangs and mobsters to terrorists. That's not something that is an infringement of our civil liberties.

Paul Ryan

I find what happens is both parties speak to their party bases to win their primary elections, but what I think is necessary to have a national election worthy of being a majority party, we have to sell converts to conservatism. We have to go out and explain why our principles apply equally and universally to everybody and why our ideas are better than the alternatives.

Paul Ryan

First of all, I can see that you love your daughter and you are a nice person who has a great future ahead of you and I hope your future is here.... This is not the focus.... And so, what we have to do is find a way to make sure that you can get right with the law and we've got to do this in a good way, so that the rug doesn't get pulled out from under you and your family gets separated...but if you're worried about, you know, some deportation force coming, knocking on your door this year, don't worry about that.... Secure the border and the people who are violent criminals, repeat offenders who keep coming back in, we've got to focus on that.

Paul Ryan

Josh Smith: But specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and should it be legal for a woman to get an abortion if she's - Paul Ryan: Yeah, well, so I'm very proud of my pro-life record, and I've always adopted the idea - the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life.

Paul Ryan

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity - and I know we can do this. 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. Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment - to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.

Paul Ryan

Ideas, passionately promoted and put to the test-that's what politics can be. That's what our country can be...It can be a confident America, where we have a basic faith in politics and leaders. It can be a place where we've earned that faith. All of us as leaders can hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and decency. Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of "our base” and "their base,” we unite people around ideas and principles. And instead of being timid, we go bold.

Paul Ryan

They shocked the American people. They shocked us. They certainly shocked me. I wasn't sure what kind of president Obama was going to be. I thought, maybe this guy is going to be a centrist-his rhetoric was centrist. His upbringing and history didn't suggest he was centrist but his rhetoric did. So I was thinking, well, we'll see. And then-bam!-out of the gates, these people had a hardcore-left agenda. We, along with the American people, were spectators while they took this government very far left, very fast. But what became so unnerving to us and the American people is that they used our rhetoric. They used the rhetoric of freedom and choice and opportunity to sell an inherently statist agenda; to sell an agenda that was completely the opposite of its rhetoric. And people started to realize that they were trying to transform the country using the rhetoric of the Right to push the substance of the Left.

Paul Ryan

Politics can be a battle of ideas, not insults. It can be about solutions. It can be about making a difference. It can be about always striving to do better. That's what it can be and what it should be. This is the system our Founders envisioned. It's messy. It's complicated. It's infuriating at times. And it's a beautiful thing too.

Paul Ryan

We have to give the American people a referendum. We will win this referendum if we have it now. If we wait and delay five or six years we will lose this referendum. The public is way ahead of the political class. They get that things are broken. They get that we're spending their kids' inheritance and mortgaging their future. They are ready to be talked to like adults and not like children. So when they see the demagoguery that is directed toward people or ideas that are sincere and are real, it doesn't work anymore. The Democrats are going to come at us with their old playbook. They're going to tap into the emotions of fear, anger, and envy. But that's not aspirational. That's not hope and change, and I don't think it's going to work anymore.

Paul Ryan

The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we're just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal-government level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So, the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they're going to pay for the person, you know, gets breast cancer in her 40s or who gets heart disease in his 50s. [...] The whole idea of Obamacare is ... the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It's not working, and that's why it's in a death spiral.

Paul Ryan

In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government.

Paul Ryan

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.

Paul Ryan

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.

Paul Ryan

If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.

Paul Ryan

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

We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years.

Paul Ryan

We need to stop spending money we don't have.

Paul Ryan

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

Paul Ryan

So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

Paul Ryan

The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.

Paul Ryan