Ron Paul Quotations | Page 4

Big government flourishes under Republicans.

Unfortunately, the greater the humanitarian outreach, the greater the violence required to achieve it.

Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy.

I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation. ...I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

Young people are not raw material to be employed by the political class on behalf of whatever fashionable political, military, or social cause catches its fancy. In a free society, their lives are not the playthings of government.

By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so called 'diversity' actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist...

Your money has never been safe in the government's hands, and it never will be. Governments spend money; it's just their nature.

Once created, federal programs are nearly impossible to eliminate.

I believe that when we overdo our military aggressiveness, it actually weakens our national defense. I mean, we stood up to the Soviets. They had 40,000 nuclear weapons. Now we're fretting day in and day and night about third-world countries that have no army, navy or air force.

Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism.

I believe only a free society can ever be truly secure. The goal should be to make terrorists feel threatened, not the American people.

America's heart and soul is more embedded in our love of liberty, self-reliance, and tolerance than by our foreign policy, driven by powerful special interests with little regard for the Constitution.

The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but is instead a threat to our liberties.

Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place... They revolted against much more mild oppression.

They've been taught by too many that this war was necessary when it isn't.

Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools.

Bush humble foreign policy was hijacked into nation-building.

...[the federal] government [has no authority] to deliver a service,...and there's no evidence to show that government has ever been efficient [at] delivering...service.

September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

If economy were good, there'd be no immigration problem.

Astonishingly, American taxpayers now will be forced to finance a multi-billion dollar jobs program in Iraq. Suddenly the war is about jobs. We export our manufacturing jobs to Asia, and now we plan to export our welfare jobs to Iraq, all at the expense of the poor and the middle class here at home.

Suicide terrorism stops when we stop intervening abroad.

Stop policing the world and we can get rid of income tax.

We don't need any troops abroad-they don't help our defense.

Every country ended slavery without civil war; US could have.

During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer.

The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard.

All branches of our government today are controlled by individuals who use their power to undermine liberty and enhance the welfare/warfare state-and frequently their own wealth and power,

I'm all for raw milk. I think you should make your own choice on whether you drink raw milk or not.

Is it any more moral to dilute the value of the purchasing power of the money you hold in your wallet than it is for the farmer to dilute the milk supply with water?

Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions.

In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, however, we are in big trouble.

The freedom message brings us together, it doesn't divide us.

Quantitative easing is just the latest chapter in the Federal Reserve’s hundred-year history of failure. (...) The American people have suffered long enough under a monetary policy controlled by an unaccountable, secretive central bank. It is time to finally audit - and then end - the Fed.

If you give up on your principles I don’t think that’s being pragmatic... Doing the wrong thing, even partially, isn’t being practical...if you have the right ideas and are forceful enough...I think you can get the support you need.

It's not like I'm just trying to win and get elected. I'm trying to change the course of history.

There is no reason, in a free society, that farmers shouldn’t be allowed to raise hemp. Hemp is a good product.

Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization.

Strictly speaking, it probably is not “necessary” for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water and the people catch on.

The only thing we should prohibit is violence.

I have never been one who is comfortable talking about my faith in the political arena. In fact, the pandering that typically occurs in the election season I find to be distasteful. But for those who have asked, I freely confess that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior, and that I seek His guidance in all that I do.

Politicians throughout history have tried to solve every problem conceivable to man, always failing to recognize that many of the problems we face result from previous so-called political solutions. Government cannot be the answer to every human ill. Continuing to view more government as the solution to problems will only make matters worse.

It is not democracy to send in billions of dollars to push regime change overseas. It isn't democracy to send in the NGOs to re-write laws and the constitution in places like Ukraine. It is none of our business.

It is incumbent on a great nation to remain confident, if it wishes to remain free. We need not be ignorant to real threats to our safety, against which we must remain vigilant. We need only to banish to the ash heap of history the notion that we ought to be ruled by our fears and those who use them to enhance their own power.

It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot

Without question, the true goal of some in Congress is to create a system of socialized medicine. It's politically expedient to slap a 'patients' rights' label on legislation that simply leads us closer to a complete government takeover of medicine.

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.

History has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled,

The concept of equal pay for equal work is not only an impossible task, it can only be accomplished with the total rejection of the idea of the voluntary contract. The idea that a businessman must hire anyone and is prevented from firing anyone for any reason he chooses, and in the name of rights, is a clear indication that the basic concept of a free society has been lost.

We'd love it if we could all just come home and not worry about the rest of the world. But the problem is, they attacked us on 9/11. We were here; they attacked us.

The Federal Reserve System is nothing more than legalized counterfeit.

This much is true: you have been lied to.

As bank customers, we tend to believe that we can have both perfect security for our money, drawing on it whenever we want and never expecting it not to be there, while still earning a regular rate of return. In a true free market, however, there tends to be a tradeoff: you can enjoy a money warehouse or you can hope for a return on your investment. You can't usually have both. The Fed, however, by backing up this fractional-reserve system with a promise of endless bailouts and money creation, attempts to keep the illusion going.

Welfarism and excessive spending and deficits and socialism divide us, because everybody has to go to Washington. Those who have the biggest clout, whose who are the best lobbyists, those who go and they grab. And whether it's the medical industrial complex, or the banking industry, or the military industrial complex, that's who ends up controlling our government.

We're bankrupting our country and we have an empire that we're trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year. And the standard of living is going down today. It's going down and the middle class is hurting because of the monetary policy. When you destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.

If you're really serious about protecting people's incomes, you've got to consider how you're going to protect the dollar. If you don't have the dollar maintaining its value, no matter where you put the money you're not going to have any value.

If I were in Congress in 1996, I would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which used Congress's constitutional authority to define what official state documents other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a 'same sex' marriage license issued in another state.

No one talks about the real ethics disaster in Washington. It's that many members of Congress will listen to any argument against a bill except for two: that it's not moral or that it's not Constitutional.

Once again, President Clinton is using American troops to deflect attention from his record of lies, distortions, obstructions of justice and abuse of power.

Reject the phony Patients' Bill of Rights....We don't have to continue down the path of socialized medical care, especially in America where free markets have provided so much for so many.

We have a greater responsibility to act than those who live in ignorance. Once you become knowledgeable, you have an obligation to do something about it.

I don't know how to run your life. I don't know how to run your life. I don't have the authority to run your life. And the Constitution doesn't permit me to run your life.

The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives - without probable cause and without a warrant.

I have some help on tweeting.

Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life.

You don't have a right to a house, you don't have a right to a job, you don't have a right to medical care.

American voters should understand that Congress will always find a way to spend every last dollar sent to Washington. Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers. ...The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard.

White Castle has a unique position in the Midwest. It is a cult brand that has developed a strong, loyal following.

Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the 'right' of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the 'property rights' of slave masters in their slaves. Moreover, by this method the State achieves a goal common to all totalitarian regimes: it sets us against each other, so that our energies are spent in the struggle between State-created classes, rather than in freeing all individuals from the State.

The last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of the dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.

Intervention in Syria is not an option. President Obama has already helped foment this civil war and supported the al-Qaeda jihadists. This is an explosive region, and more US intervention means more people will die. We should be choosing peace - not a new conflict. More so than anyone else, my supporters know that America cannot afford another unlawful, immoral war in the Middle East. Stand with me and tell President Obama to stay out of Syria.

I am absolutely convinced, you never have to give up any of your freedoms in order to be secure.

The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.

Ignorance, as well as disapproval for the natural restraints placed on market excesses that capitalism and sound markets impose, cause our present leaders to reject capitalism and blame it for all the problems we face. If this fallacy is not corrected and capitalism is even further undermined, the prosperity that the free market generates will be destroyed.

To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names — Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment toward us.

Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand.

What you are inferring is, If we were to legalise heroin tomorrow everybody would use heroin. How many people here would start using heroin? I bet nobody would. Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don't want to use heroin, so I need these laws.

The law cannot make a wicked person virtuous…God’s grace alone can accomplish such a thing.

For those who have asked, I freely confess that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior, and that I seek His guidance in all that I do.

If somebody's in prison for non-violence, drug usage, and never committed a hard crime, they should be pardoned and let out.

Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession.

Americans are tired of the games and the lies of today's media. They want the truth. Imagine this. No censors, no barricades, no statists. We will be able to engage viewers directly on subjects that matter most to them, from finances to civil liberties to foreign policy.

I'm an imperfect messenger, but the message is perfect.

They ask me if I'm going to quit. I thought we were just getting started. We have a revolution to fight, a country to change.

While President Obama was starting and expanding unconstitutiona l wars overseas, Bradley Manning, whose actions have caused exactly zero deaths, was shining light on the truth behind these wars.

Let us give up our longing for welfare, our love of war, and our desire to see the government control and shape our fellow citizens. We must come to imagine liberty again, and believe that it can be a reality. We must recapture what it means to be free.

Even if you don't like guns and don't want to own them, you benefit from those who do.

The freer the market is and the more respect you have for private property, the better the environment is protected.

I want to be president mainly for what I don't want to do: I don't want to run your life, I don't want to run the economy, and I don't want to police the world.

Because gold is honest money it is disliked by dishonest men.

I have my shortcomings. But the message, it has no shortcomings. The message of Liberty is what America is all about.

Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea.

There was a time when a willingness to criticize one's own government when it was wrong was the very definition of patriotism.

Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers.