If you live your life as a hostage to everybody else's decision, you either have to live a very narrow life, or you have to spend a lot of time in pain.
— Newt Gingrich
I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress.
People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz.
I have a sense of being at peace. I understand when you give the sign of peace, and when the priest says, 'Peace be with you,' in a way I never did 10 or 15 years ago. I have a deep personal sense of what that means.
Philosophically, I am very different from normal politicians, and normal consultants found that very hard to deal with.
There is no question that at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about my country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.
One of my messages to Republicans is very simple: One-third of your schedule should be listening to people in minority communities.
I don't know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor.
I believe most evangelicals know that defeating Obama is at heart of our country's future.
If we are all endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness, that has to apply to the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest counties, and I am prepared to find something that works, that breaks us out of the cycles we have now to find a way for poor children to work and earn honest money.
The U.S. cannot be the policeman of the world. When we tried that in Vietnam, they beat us up.
I got active in this business of politics and self-government in 1958 when my father, who was serving in the U.S. Army, took us to the battlefield of Verdun.
Both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance.
While abolishing judgeships and lower federal courts is a blunt tool and one whose use is warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances... it is one of many possibilities to check and balance the judiciary.
Trump would represent turmoil - unless he changed, unless he said, 'Now that I got to be president, I'm gonna be normal.'
When you come to America, you get to become an American, and Trump, who has grandparents who came to the U.S., should understand this as much as anybody.
Trump has got to, I think, move to a new level. This is no longer the primaries. He's no longer an interesting contender. He is now the potential leader of the United States and he's got to move his game up to the level of being a potential leader.
I had a period of thinking that I would have been called 'Newt the McPherson,' as in 'Robert the Bruce.'
I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply-side economics.
I would just say, if Gov. Romney wants to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, that I would be glad to listen to him. And I would bet you $10 - not $10,000 - that he would not take the offer.
If I had to choose Reaganomics or 13 staffers quitting, I think for the average working American, Reaganomics was a much better deal.
NASA should not be developing its own proprietary version of capabilities it could purchase commercially at much lower cost, especially when we know the agency's bureaucratic tendencies will be to view the commercial versions as competitors to kill.
If, as the popular saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the people who run our public schools fit that description.
The thing that shocks people... is that I mean what I say. I don't use hyperbole.
The values of the Left cripple human beings, weaken cities, make it difficult for us to in fact survive as a country.
I've been very clear publicly I'm not a perfect human being, and I've made mistakes in my life, and I've had to apologize to God and to seek reconciliation.
You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work. What if you paid them in the afternoon to work in the clerical office or as the assistant librarian?
Frankly, I would not have made any difference in Vietnam, but much more is what difference it would have made in me.
If you're not in 'The Washington Post' every day, you might as well not exist.
In very rare circumstances, the executive branch might choose to ignore a court decision.
The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial and far too powerful.
This is a candidate who never even thought about policy. What Trump represents is pure willpower and the notion of breaking through the system.
By definition, the person who learns enough to become the nominee is almost certainly the best person for the general election.
If a liberal were to attack Justice Clarence Thomas on the grounds that he's black, we would all go crazy.
Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate.
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.
People have to render judgment. In my case, I've said upfront openly, I've made mistakes at times. I've had to go to God for forgiveness. I've had to seek reconciliation. But I'm also a 68-year-old grandfather, and I think people have to measure who I am now and whether I'm a person they can trust.
We have big ideas. I just think that's part of how you campaign. You talk to the American people about big things.
I clearly have done things that were wrong. I've clearly had to seek God's forgiveness.
The fact is inner-city black districts are not the same as suburban Republican districts. That's a fact. And people need to go and learn about the whole country.
Islamic extremism may well be the greatest threat to Western values and Western security in the world.
I think what you'll find is overall, overwhelmingly, evangelicals would prefer me to Barack Obama.
I pray before virtually every speech and virtually every major decision.
Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.
I intend to go up there and kick the system over, not try to change it.
I'm a controversial guy.
The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis.
The government shut down 12 times under Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill. It was only shut down twice while I was speaker.
We have to be as militant defending America as the enemies of America are in trying to destroy America.
If Trump keeps learning, he could become a big asset. He will shatter the traditional patterns.
