Great Throughts Treasury

"I could hardly stand by and allow the party to cannibalize itself in that situation, and I felt it [the decision to step down] was best for all of us."

"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."

"I don't care who you are, I care who you want to be."

"I don't want him to be president and I don't think he should be."

"I discourage a cult of personality."

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors."

"I have two grandchildren -- Maggie is 11, Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

"I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count. -- Newt Gingrich, complaining that the press was ignoring his prodigious Twitter following, which had numbered over 1.3 million people. More than 90% of those followers, however, turned out to be fake -- the result of Gingrich's campaign hiring a firm to boost his follower count by creating dummy accounts en masse."

"I love the environment, but I'm cheap on the environment."

"I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I?m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power."

"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."

"I read Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them and I found frightening pieces that related to?my own life."

"I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through, In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we're more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That's just a fact."

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating ? none of which was true. In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve ... He was authentically dishonest."

"I think I am a transformational figure. I think I am trying to effect a change so large that the people who would be hurt by the change, the liberal machine, have a natural reaction...I think because I'm so systematically purposeful about changing our world...I'm a much tougher partisan that they've [the Democrats] seen... much more intense, much more persistent, much more willing to take risks to get it done."

"I think that on most things most days, the vast majority of practicing homosexuals are good citizens. So why would you say that of all the different groups you can pick on, this is the one group that you are going to single out?..."

"I think I was very lonely and I think I was driven...If you decide in your freshman year in high school that your job is to spend your lifetime trying to change the future of your people, you're probably fairly weird. I think I was pretty weird as a kid."

"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."

"I want to say to the elite of this country?the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton? of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don?t have the courage to look at the world you have created. [Speaking about the Columbine shootings, May 1999]"

"I want to make sure every House Republican is protected from some kind of dishonest Democratic ad. So let me say on the record, any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood. Because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate and I'm prepared to stand up and ? When I make a mistake ? and I'm going to on occasion ? I want to share with the American people "that was a mistake" because that way we can have an honest conversation."

"I understood totally that in my hometown and among people who knew me, there would be a lot of people who would be very cynical [about the divorce and his remarriage several months later to Marianne Ginther] and would say, ?Who does he think he is?? And part of my conclusion is the same one I'm sure you run into. If the only people allowed to write news stories were those who had never told a lie, we wouldn't have many stories. If the only people allowed to serve on juries were saints, we wouldn't have any juries. And I thought there was a clear distinction between my private life and the deliberate use of a position of authority to seduce and abuse somebody in your care. And I would draw that distinction."

"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to."

"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."

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

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

"I would say to you unequivocally --it will probably sound pious and sanctimonious saying it-- I am a sinner. I am a normal person. I am like everyone else I ever met. One of the reasons I go to God is that I ain't very good --I'm not perfect."

"I was very lonely, very driven, and pretty weird as a kid."

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

"I?m running for President."

"If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don?t have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they?re relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn?t matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes."

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

"If the average taxpayer had a list of the ten weirdest courses their tax money was funding at their state university, they would ask for a refund. It?s not just that their money is being wasted. It is used to subsidize bizarre and destructive visions of reality. People are paying to have their own children miseducated."

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

"If Thomas Edison had invented the electric light in the age of the welfare state, the Democrats would immediately introduce a bill to protect the candle-making industry. The Democrat ticket would propose a tax on electricity --in fact, Al Gore does propose a tax on electricity. Ralph Nader would warn that electricity can kill; and at least one news report would begin, 'The candle-making industry was threatened today.'"

"If you go to the Lincoln Memorial, the Second Inaugural is probably the most religious speech ever given by an American President. In its 732 words, it references God 14 times and has two verses of the Bible."

"If this just degenerates after a historic election, back into the usual bologna of politics in Washington and pettiness in Washington, then the American people I believe will move towards a third party in a massive way."

"In Washington DC 800 babies are left in dumpsters a year. Newt Gingrich with a very big lie. It was not 800, it was four. But considering his views on abortion and welfare he may just help his lie come true."

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

"If you sell them (drugs), we will kill you."

"If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this."

"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."

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

"I'm opposed to giving people money for doing nothing."

"I'm not studying this, I'm not looking at it in great detail, but the last guy to announce on your show came in fourth."

"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."

"In every election in American history both parties have their clich‚s. The party that has the clich‚s that ring true wins."

"It is astonishing to me --in this era of widespread and well-deserved disillusionment with big government-- that so many well-informed, concerned citizens would want to nationalize and bureaucratize American medicine, some as explicitly as the highly structured National Health Service in the United Kingdom. We only need look at the postal and public school systems to learn that nationalization means neither efficiency nor economy and at the telephone system to learn that private monopolies also have their flaws."

"it is a complete misreading of the 14th Amendment to suggest that the fact that you illegally touched American soil gives you all the protections of the Constitution, and unless we pay for your lawyer and give you 9 years to fight, it's not fair. If you're here illegally, why are we pretending you're here legally?"

"It is false to suggest that Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father believed in a legal barrier to God in the public square."

"It doesn?t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There?s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn?t matter what I live."