Quotes By Rick Perry

We believe in government involvement that leads to independence: good schools, quality roads and the best health care.

Those jobs flee other states because of factors like excessive taxation, punitive regulation and frivolous lawsuits.

In the myopic world of the liberals, guns are responsible for evil instead of the perpetrator of evil. But criminals are not bound by our laws. That's what makes them criminals.

We had a $10 billion budget deficit when we got here in January of 2003. We cut that budget deficit; we did not raise taxes; we came back in '05, and we had an $8 billion surplus. That's how fast it can happen.

The God we serve does not seek out the perfect, but instead uses our imperfections and our shortcomings for his greater good. I am humbled by my own limitations. But where I am weak, He is strong.

America needs jobs, smaller government, less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.

Armed and law-abiding citizens are a greater deterrent to violent crime than 1,000 laws passed by Congress.

It is through states that the American people get the job done every day, often in spite of a deeply flawed bureaucratic federal government.

I don't think Obama understands basic economics. Not economics that work. He may understand some theory that someone in Princeton sat and dreamed up, but it's not working.

Scouting ought to be about building character, not about sex. Period. Precious few parents enroll their boys in the Scouts to get a crash course in sexual orientation.

I'm worried about that man or woman sitting around - the coffee table tonight or in their kitchen talking about how are we going to get to work. How are we going to have the dignity to take care of our family.

Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.

Under Obama, our federal tax dollars can now be used to fund abortion all over the world. With the stroke of a pen, abortion essentially became a U.S. foreign export.

I am also the product of a place called Paint Creek. Doesn't have a zip code. It's too small to be called a town along the rolling plains of Texas. We grew dryland cotton and wheat, and when I wasn't farming or attending Paint Creek Rural School, I was generally over at Troop 48 working on my Eagle Scout award.

I think you need to have a tax system that basically is flat, fair and simple. And - that you can put on a post card. I mean, even Timothy Geithner could do this one and get it on time.

The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.

I mean, Dodd-Frank is strangling small community banks. It doesn't make any difference what the interest rate is. They're not - they're not going to loan the money because they can't make any money for one thing plus the cost of compliance.

Texas created more jobs in 2008 than the rest of the states - combined.

We know there is no such thing as freedom without the risk of failure.

Washington's insatiable desire to spend our children's inheritance on failed stimulus plans and other misguided economic theories have given record debt and left us with far too many unemployed.

Our goal is to displace the entrenched powers in Washington, restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government.

I got all the respect in the world for the front-runners in this race, but ask yourself: If we replace a Democratic insider with a Republican insider, you think we're really going to change Washington, D.C.? You don't have to settle for Washington and Wall Street insiders who supported the Wall Street bailout and the Obamacare individual mandate.

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed, included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

Obama is a president, who I think is anti-jobs.

Here is what we know after more than a decade of Republican rule: Texas works. Even 'The New York Times' let it slip into its pages that, 'Texas is the future.'

But if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children, because they will become a drag on our society.

I disagree with the concept that somehow or another we're going to pack up 10, to 12, to 15 million people and ship them back to the country of origin. That's not going to happen.

When the good lord calls you home, the government ought not come get your home.

The Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American,and a threat to every private sector job in this country.

According to a study by Achieve Incorporated, Texas is the first state to make a college-prep curriculum the standard coursework in high school, starting with this year's ninth grade class.