Ron Paul

“You don't have freedom because you are a hyphenated American you have freedom because you are an individual, and that should be protected.”

— Ron Paul

“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat.”

— Ron Paul

“If you like small government you need to work hard at having a strong national defense that is not so militant. Personal liberty is the purpose of government, to protect liberty - not to run your personal life, not to run the economy, and not to pretend that we can tell the world how they ought to live.”

— Ron Paul

“I have never met anyone who did not support our troops. Sometimes, however, we hear accusations that someone or some group does not support the men and women serving in our Armed Forces. But this is pure demagoguery, and it is intellectually dishonest.”

— Ron Paul

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

— Ron Paul

“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.”

— Ron Paul

“What is not conservative about saying, 'Don't go to war unless we go to war properly with a full declaration of war and no other way?'”

— Ron Paul

“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.”

— Ron Paul

“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.”

— Ron Paul

“Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.”

— Ron Paul

“There's nothing wrong with being a Conservative and coming up with a Conservative believe in foreign policy where we have a strong national defense and we don't go to war so carelessly.”

— Ron Paul

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

— Ron Paul

“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.”

— Ron Paul

“The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.”

— Ron Paul

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

— Ron Paul

“I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.”

— Ron Paul

“Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense.”

— Ron Paul

“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”

— Ron Paul

“In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.”

— Ron Paul

“Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.”

— Ron Paul