My father told me "If you choose to let this money destroy your initiative and independence, then it will be a curse to you and my action in giving it to you will have been a mistake. I shall regret very much to have you miss the glorious feeling of accomplishment. Remember that often adversity is a blessing in disguise and is certainly the greatest character builder."

The trajectory of this country [USA] is not positive and particularly for the disadvantaged, as we see what's happening. The gains in productivity have dropped, the gains in income for the middle class and the least advantaged have slowed, at best.

In America, we are just moving the chairs around and spending huge amounts of money rather than having them go in making people's lives better.

I learned that unless you start working, if you're frozen out of work, you will never learn the habits, the discipline, the values of cooperation and improvement unless you get a job, and that's what statistic show. It's, unless you get a job and keep it, you will not get out of poverty. If you do, you have a very good chance of working out of poverty.

We are on dangerous terrain when government picks winners and losers in the economy by subsidizing favored products and industries.

I've had the philosophy that John Adams expressed, in the kind of system that we're trying to create in this country: that this is a system for moral people. It will work for no other.

When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.