I appreciate the few people who say nice things about me and say, 'Gee, you were right about this,' or, 'You were right about that.' But frankly, I spend my time looking ahead. I've got 23 grandkids, and I'm concerned about what their world is going to be like.
— Mitt Romney
What's at the heart of my faith is a belief that there's a creator. That we're all children of the same God. And that, fundamentally, the relationship you have with your spouse is important and eternal.
A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.
In every stump speech I give, I speak about the fact that people who dream and achieve enormous success do not make us poorer - they make us better off.
For American foreign aid to become more effective, it must embrace the power of partnerships, access the transformative nature of free enterprise, and leverage the abundant resources that can come from the private sector.
One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate. That is how needy and neglected causes have become global initiatives.
I believe that if America does not lead, others will - others who do not share our interests and our values - and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us.
We Americans have always felt a special kinship with the future.
I've met people of great faith. I sat in the home of Billy Graham and in the residence of Cardinal Dolan and prayed with these men of God.
Woody Allen said that 95% of history is explained as a man trying to impress a woman. And that's true in my life.
In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.
I think we should have the majority of the party's voters decide who they want as their nominee.
You can't continue to have higher education tuition grow at a multiple of the rate of inflation.
I love my dad. It's fair to say that I probably would not have thought of politics had I not seen my mom and dad involved in politics.
If you live in the mountains, you long for the trees and the lakes.
If I have a bad hair day, I just think, 'Well, it will be an OK hair day tomorrow. Just put your head down and go.'
The decision to put American lives at risk is a decision that has a very high hurdle to pass.
I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.
It is time to cut out the mountains of waste and inefficiency and duplication in the federal government.
When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God.
I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.
An earthquake strikes Haiti, and care packages from America are among the first to arrive - and not far behind are former Presidents Clinton and Bush.
The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.
When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there.
We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: honesty, charity, integrity and family.
I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.
I do recognize and I feel very comfortable with people taking a good look at how I've lived my life, and obviously my faith is a big part of that.
Consulting offered me an opportunity to see a lot of different businesses in different regions of the world, to see how textiles were being affected by foreign competition, how technology was changing.
Primaries are the place where you see whose message is connecting with the largest number of people.
To help the parents make the choice of which school to send their child to, I would insist that schools are graded on a simple basis that parents can understand, A through F. The way Florida is done.
I think effective leaders typically are able to see the future to a certain degree and then try to take actions to shape it in some way.
Mike Dukakis, you know, he can't get a job mowing lawns.
There is no day more joyful in my life than when I see all my family around me. That's the best it gets.
Were it my choice, I would not vote for Russia to hold the Winter Olympics or the Summer Olympics. But it's not my choice.
A white male Mormon millionaire was not gonna beat Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, but someone deserved to go out there and give him a real run for his money.
I believe in my Mormon faith, and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs.
Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.
I've been on Letterman a couple of times. I've been on Leno more than a couple times, and now Letterman hates me because I've been on Leno more than him. They're very jealous of one another, as you know.
Free enterprise cannot only make us better off financially, it can make us better people.
The torch America carries is one of decency and hope. It is not America's torch alone. But it is America's duty - and honor - to hold it high enough that all the world can see its light.
I was born in the middle of the century in the middle of the country, a classic Baby Boomer.
If I were to offer advice to any president of the United States, it would be this: do whatever you can do to keep America the most prosperous and free and powerful nation on earth.
It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party. I utterly reject that pessimism.
I think Dodd-Frank has contributed to a concentration of banking assets in the hands of a small number of banks.
During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.
I just think the most important aspect in being able to have a productive relationship between the teachers' unions and the districts and the states that they're dealing with is that the person sitting across the table from them should not have received the largest campaign contributions from the teachers' union itself.
Education is largely run at the state level.
John Kerry was always in front of the camera but not out doing the hard work.
I actually have several busts of Ronald Reagan that have been presented to me.
Happiness, for me, is a function of the number of people I love, and I think joy and happiness is directly related to how many people are in our lives and how deeply we are bonded with those people.
