Ron paul quotes

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.

Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.

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

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited.

Don't steal - the government hates competition!

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

I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.

There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.

If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both.

The Federal Reserve System is nothing more than legalized counterfeit.

Spain has been massively diverting capital from the private sector into politically favored environmental projects for the better part of a decade...every green job created, eliminated 2.2 real jobs and cost around $800,000 each!

Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states "accountable" for their education performance...In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.

There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.

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.

Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.

My message is simple - freedom works a lot better than the authoritarian style of government.

Amend Constitution to remove aliens' birthright citizenship.

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

We don't have the freedom of speech to talk about the weather. We have the first amendment so we can say some very controversial things.

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the establishment, and saved their country.

During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.

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

Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it's wrong.

Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.

Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?

I lean toward a flat tax. But I want to make it real flat, like ZERO.

Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it's wrong.

Have you noticed the debt is exploding? And it's not all because of Medicare.

Unlike Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, I never voted to provide taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood.

When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies.

When things go badly, individuals look for scapegoats. I just do not believe that barbed-wire fences or guns on our border will solve any of our problems.

My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.

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.

Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.

Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10-mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe.

This much is true: you have been lied to.

It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control... This idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.

The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance.

Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade.

Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.

The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self-interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state.

As long as we live beyond our means, we are destined to live beneath our means.

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

An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any force.

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 is true that liberty is not free, nor is it easy. But tyranny - even varying degrees of it - is much more difficult, and much more expensive. The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty.

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.

You can't have a healthy economy without sound money, which is why we're on the verge of very serious economic problem.

Speak up, speak often and don’t worry about those that at this point cannot understand as they can never un-hear what we tell them.

As recent as the year 2000 we won elections by saying we shouldn't be the policemen of the world, and that we should not be nation building. And its time we got those values back into this country.

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.

1913 wasn't a very good year. 1913 gave us the income tax, the 16th amendment and the IRS.

Governments, whether they're dictatorships or democracies, reflect the people. When the people get fed up, they throw them out.

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.

The Congress should not be creating money out of thin air, which is what Lincoln did when he created greenbacks. But it is a congressional responsibility to maintain gold and silver as a legal tender.

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value.

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism.

The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.

Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.

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.

We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.

After years spent in Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government's ineptness and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions.

Could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.

Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to halt the spending orgy.

The most sinister of all taxes is the inflation tax and it is the most regressive. It hits the poor and the middle class. When you destroy a currency by creating money out of thin air to pay the bills, the value of the dollar goes down, and people get hit with a higher cost of living. It's the middle class that's being wiped out. It is most evil of all taxes.

Privacy IS freedom. Leave us alone!

Back a hundred years ago, especially around Woodrow Wilson, what happened in this country is we took freedom and we chopped it into pieces.

Prices are going up. Unemployment is continue to go up. And we have not had the necessary correction for the financial bubble created by our Federal Reserve system.

If you can’t protect life, then how can you protect liberty?

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?

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less.

Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness. The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom-loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

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

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

Banning guns because of their misuse is like banning the First Amendment because one might libel or slander.

It is a dangerous notion that we need a government to protect us from ourselves.

The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George... Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security.

Terror is a tactic. We can not wage "war" against a tactic.

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.

We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion.

When we finally decide that drug prohibition has been no more successful than alcohol prohibition, the drug dealers will disappear.

America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.

Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed.

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.

Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.

Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization.

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions

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.

The constant refrain that bringing our troops home would demonstrate a lack of support for them must be one of the most amazing distortions ever foisted on the American public.

I want to just obey the Constitution.The Constitution says only gold and silver can be legal tender.

Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.

Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.

By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing.

There is but one special interest that we should be working for, and that would solve just about all of our problems, and that is our liberty.

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

We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost...Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.

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.

The only thing we should prohibit is violence.

I wouldn't vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws.

Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

Republican control of the Senate = expanded neocon wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming!

We're being taxed to blow up bridges in Iraq and rebuild them, while ours at home are falling down

Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism.

We should have a strong president. Strong enough to resist the temptation of taking power that a president shouldn't have.

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

The ultimate solution is not in the hands of the government. The solution falls on each and every individual, with guidance from family, friends and community. The #1 responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow. This is of greater importance than working on changing the government; that is secondary to promoting a virtuous society. If we can achieve this, then the government will change.

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.

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this.

It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control.

Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.

No single person, including the President of the United States, should ever be given the power to make a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans. Freedom over one's physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.

We in the Congress have a moral and constitutional obligation to protect the value of the dollar and to understand why it is so important to the economy that a central bank not be given the unbelievable power of inflating a currency at will and pretending that it knows how to fine-tune an economy through this counterfeit system of money.

Expect the rapidly expanding homeschooling movement to play a significant role in the revolutionary reforms needed to build a free society with Constitutional protections.

It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot

We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

We need to get the government out of the way. Inflation hits the middle class and the poor the most. Those are the people who are losing it. We don't have enough competition. There's a doctor monopoly out there. We need alternative health care freely available to the people. They ought to be able to make their own choices and not controlled by the FDA preventing them to use some of the medications.