Top 374 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Ryan
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American politician Paul Ryan.
Last updated on April 13, 2025.
Borrowing and spending is not the way to prosperity.
Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.
I'm going to speak my mind. I'm going to defend conservatism as I understand it. I'm going to defend our ideas as the Republican Party.
This is a government takeover of our healthcare system. It is the government basically running the entire healthcare system, turning large insurers into de facto public utilities, depriving people of choice, depriving people of options, raising people's prices, raising taxes when we need new jobs.
The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'
If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.
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.
We need leadership. We don't need a doubling down on the failed politics of the past.
Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We believe, as our founders did, that 'the pursuit of happiness' depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government.
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.
The debt and the deficit is just getting out of control, and the administration is still pumping through billions upon trillions of new spending. That does not grow the economy.
Here's the problem if you keep raising tax rates: You slow down economic growth.
Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all. So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?
America is more than just a country. It's more than Chicago or Wisconsin. It's more than our borders. America is an idea. It's a very precious idea.
If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people's prejudices.
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.
In Pennsylvania, 38 percent of Pennsylvania seniors chose to get their Medicare from a plan called Medicare Advantage. It's their choice. Forty-seven percent of them are going to lose it under 'Obamacare' according to Medicare by 2017.
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.
And to this day, my Mom is my role model.
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?
So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?
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.
That's the real secret to job creation - not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.
The secret to understanding me is, I'm not trying to be anybody other than who I actually am. People want candid, refreshing leadership. And I've always tried to go with solutions. You know, I've always tried to say, here's how we get our economy growing, here's why we get our debt under control. That's what Mitt Romney is offering.
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.
I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.
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.
I call crony capitalism, where you take money from successful small businesses, spend it in Washington on favored industries, on favored individuals, picking winners and losers in the economy, that's not pro-growth economics. That's not entrepreneurial economics. That's not helping small businesses. That's cronyism, that's corporate welfare.
If borrowing and spending all this money led to more jobs than we would be at full employment already.
Hiding spending does not reduce spending.
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.
Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies - an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus. All of this new government spending was sold as 'investment.'
We are looking for bipartisan solutions not partisan rhetoric.
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.
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.
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.
We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.
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.
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?
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.
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.
We want to have a system where people can come here and work - go back and forth if they want to... so that we have an open door to the people who want to come and contribute to our country, who want to come and make a difference in their families' lives and our economy.
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.
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.
Do we believe that the goal of government is to promote equal opportunity for all Americans to make the most of their lives? Or, do we now believe that government's role is to equalize the results of peoples lives?
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.
Everyone is equal. Everyone has a place. No one is written off, because there is worth and goodness in every life... That is the Republican ideal. And if we won't defend it, who will?
Free enterprise empowers entrepreneurs who have ideas and imagination, investors who take risks, and workers who hone their skills and offer their labor.
Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.
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.
We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility.
This is what life is like with the Clintons. It is one scandal after another, and you never know what's coming next. They use the system to enrich themselves.
The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.
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