Newt Gingrich Quotations

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.

The secular elites are so terrified of telling the truth about radical Islam. When you talk about the radical Islamists, we have got to get straight and get serious and talk about it in the right way.

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

If you're not brave, you're not going to be free.

We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.

All unemployment compensation should be tied to a job training requirement. Now the fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree.

It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending.

I think to close half of Magic Kingdom for the purpose of a White House invitation town hall meeting on a phony main street on behalf of a phony president just strikes me as weird.

The most important social welfare program in America is a job.

If the Soviet empire still existed, I'd be terrified. The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now.

We tried to have diplomas without learning, we tried to have jobs without work, we tried to have houses without savings, we tried to have government without responsibility.

In the middle of a recession no tax increase is justified because it kills jobs, and any tax increase is a job-killing measure and should be defeated.

You know, modern liberals are just, I think frankly, totally off the deep end... their only answer is to yell racism and hide.

An energy tax punishes senior citizens, it punishes rural Americans, if you use electricity it punishes you. This bill will increase your cost of living and may kill your job.

Now, I know among the politically correct, you're not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.

I believe we will elect a new President in 2012.

President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.

We're all human and we all goof. Do things that may be wrong, but do something.

Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.

The bigotry question goes both ways. There's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. None of it gets covered by the news media.

I believe we are now in a struggle over whether or not we are going to save America.

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.

What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If voters care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots.

I will focus on being substantive and I will focus on Barack Obama.

I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people's religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought to all oppose burning the Koran.

Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism.

I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.

My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I'm going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results.

Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they're cultural?

Part of why the Tea Party so deeply threatened the elite media is the tea party looked around and suddenly realized, there are more of us than there are of them.

The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

Frankly, Governor Romney in his career has created more jobs than the entire Obama cabinet combined, so he could actually talk about it.

And by the way I don't object if people want to attack me, that's their right. All I'm suggesting that it's not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking.

I will continue to find ways to help poor people find a job, get a job, and learn someday to own the job.

I'm going to be the nominee. It's very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I'm going to be the nominee.

If the Obama administration is this afraid of Glenn Beck, how do they deal with the Iranians?

President Obama has created at least three jobs that I know of - Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown.

We don't we agree that litigation reform to lower the cost of healthcare would be a good starting point?

You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

Surely the President can agree with us, that theft from government is not good. I know it's bold. It's out on the edge. I know from a Chicago-Springfield background it's hard to fully grasp that honesty could be part of government.

And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind.

Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?

My hope is that military planning will be designed to coerce him or replace him and will not simply punish him and leave him in charge of building the weapons, ... That's not a victory. That's a defeat.

One morning, just like 9/11, there's going to be a disaster. I have yet to see the United Nations do anything effective with either Iran or North Korea.

My goal was to establish a Republican majority for a long time, not just to win three elections,

My deepest belief is that all of this is part of a much bigger story and that we have to wait until we've seen the report before we can reach any judgment,

No Palestinian official should talk about or threaten bloodshed, but yet it is a routine pattern in this region for the Palestinian Authority to, in effect, incite violence,

My fear is the composition of this commission, which is very, very traditional in its assumptions about government in America and the direction of the president's efforts to maintain quotas and set-asides while claiming he's against them, that that in fact will divert us and make it harder to solve problems,

If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?

If this goes down and we end up in a steep, worldwide depression, some of us will have the comfort of knowing we cast the right vote,

If we regroup and reclaim the mantle of reform and change, we are likely to win '06 and '08. If we do not regroup, we are likely to have a very difficult '06 and '08.

If we renew American civilization, if we restore faith, if we defeat the drug culture, if we reestablish incentives, if we decentralize so local volunteers and local leaders create local solutions, if we replace ignorance with knowledge so that every citizen is able to pursue happiness, I think we could in a generation give our grandchildren the kind of America which would let them lead the entire human race,

Less than 10% of our analysts of North Korea are fluent in Korean.

much bigger story here and history will prove that it was best to wait for the report.

Medicaid is projected to spend $340 billion in 2006 in combined federal and state dollars. I encourage everyone to think of this program not as a problem, but as an opportunity for real progress, ... A 21st Century Responsible Citizen Medicaid Act would empower those who depend on Medicaid and align incentives so that patients receive markedly better care at lower cost in an environment where physicians, hospitals, pharmacists and nursing homes compete for patients based on the value of their services.

has to be a criminal offense of the first order. How can you have an American president asking for money from foreign leaders? ...I think this is one of the most disturbing revelations we've ever had about an American president because it would indicate a total absence of judgement that really, I think, puts the nation in substantial danger.

He is purely and simply the most important developer of effective management and of effective public policy in the 20th century, ... In the more than 30 years that I've studied him, talked with him and learned from him, he has been invaluable and irreplaceable.

Ideas precede reform. If you can't think it, you can't say it and you can't do it.

I found everything we've seen about Mrs. Willey's testimony ... to be very troubling,

Frankly I believe that there's too little funding for intelligence, we have too few assets and too few analysts. And I think if the Congress and others are going to demand a greater capacity in intelligence we're going to have to be prepared to pay for a more sophisticated and a more intense structure of intelligence capabilities, and I think its wrong for some members of Congress to vote to cut intelligence spending, to vote to cut the number of intelligence analysts and then to set unrealistically high demands on the intelligence community.

For so many Americans, what goes on here in Washington often seems abstract and remote, unrelated to their daily concerns,

If allowed to stand, this decision will place the lives of our brave fighting men and women -- and ultimately millions of Americans -- in jeopardy,

I don't want to be critical of the White House, but the key is to put the Iraqi campaign in the context of a regional struggle that includes elements in Syria , Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and then put that in the context of the larger struggle against the irreconcilable wing of Islam,

I don't understand how people can rush to a solution before they finish the investigation, ... There's an awful lot of evidence that hasn't been gathered yet. People need to allow the process to go forward in an orderly manner and not assume that they know what the final outcome will be either way.

I believe that whatever that document is -- inevitably and legitimately -- the American people should have access to (it). Certainly all of the members will want access, the senators will want access... ... We think it is, frankly, more legitimate and more in the spirit of what we are trying to do ... for everyone to have access to it.

To David Sarnoff, the creator of NBC, the word 'visionary' meant a capacity to see into tomorrow and make it work.

Today and tomorrow we are at a historic moment,

Today I have reached a difficult personal decision. I will not be a candidate for Speaker of the 106th Congress,

What you are building, if you build it right, if you dedicate yourself to perfection, will allow the people across the planet to be free for the next half century, will allow America to lead the world,

We're now looking ahead to what we're going to do in the next two years, next three years, but I think it's in the same model of trying to continue to move towards a reformed federal government.

We may be at the end of a 40-year cycle of bitterness. I've spent enough of my life fighting. It would be nice to spend some time constructing, and I think that there's a feel in the country that's very similar.

He was a kind soul with a rare ability to make people laugh, ... lost a very, very dear friend.

Imagine a party that grew over the next four years as much as we've grown over the last four.

undermining the core values of civility -- and it's time they were stopped by a society that values free speech enough to protect it.

The people helping us have apparently been killed, ... Saddam is still in charge. We are trying to help somebody who doesn't want help, in order to hurt somebody we are not hurting, in order to save people who just got killed. I am not sure what the policy is about.

Paul Coverdell lived a life that we can all be proud of and look up to,

I wrote a book called 'To Renew America,' and I look up at a sign that says, 'Renewing America's Purpose,' ... I feel that they're building at what we did, and I feel actually, very comfortable with it.

I think it would be more helpful now if they find a way to bring real movement. I think we need more than initiatives. We need steps to be taken.

I think the challenge to Republicans now is you have the House, you have the Senate, you have the White House, you had better so thoroughly reform this government that people believe you can deliver.

I think they are showing a greater willingness to look for new suggestions, new ideas, new approaches than at any time in the presidency. I think they realize the larger system has failed: They are not where they want to be on Iraq; the first week after Katrina was an absolute failure.

I think a lot of our members resent the kind of muscle that the union bosses have brought into the Capitol,

It functions like an afterthought. We couldn't have designed a greater invitation to unhappiness.

I think people exaggerate the role that particular strategy had,

I think Secretary Powell is an extraordinary figure and I think he's a very effective advocate, but I think he is currently presiding over an institution that's broken,

I think he is one of the two greatest presidents of the 20th century, along with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ... He shaped both America and the world, and they are different places than they would have been without Ronald Reagan.

It is our historic destiny and fate, there is no other country big enough, complex enough or capable of providing leadership on a worldwide basis.

It is not my habit to answer questions posed to me when I am halfway out the door with my back turned ... The speaker and I continue to work as effectively as we have for the last four years.

I think this administration tends to have the right general policies but to be remarkably unwilling to look at how weak their instruments of implementation are. We threw away a year in Iraq because of our mistakes.

It happened in America because for two generations, we haven't had the guts to talk about right and wrong,

I think it's a major mistake to add primaries at the very beginning, ... because you've earned it.

It is a bill which clearly is going to be decisive in helping us move towards stopping illegal immigration,

I think we prefer to go to instant check on an immediate basis and try to accelerate implementing instant checks so that you could literally check by thumb print whether there was a convicted felon with dangerous behavior or dangerous mental behavior. Instant check is a much better system than the Brady process.

I thought there would be 20 more no votes,

You have to ask how much did they know, did they brief the administration on it and what were they doing? And then, second, you have to ask if you really want the kind of real time coverage that some people want, are you willing to pay for that level of asset and level of analysis? It's a very expensive proposition.

We are committed to setting aside the 700 billion dollars in surplus for tax cuts, ... Having taken care of Social Security, we believe the extra money should go to tax cuts. Period.