The most important thing of all is my parents were able to leave all four of their children better off than themselves. That story has a name, it's called the American dream.

I'm not going to change who I am. I'm not going to change why I'm running... I'm running for president [in 2016], and I'm running because we can't afford another four years like the last eight years.

I honestly believe that once people begin to understand what's at stake here, that we have a chance here not just to make our country great, but greater than it's ever been, and we have a plan to do it, I think is going to begin to influence a lot of voters, not to mention coalesce those maybe who were with someone else first around us.

There's never going to be a time where the Republican Party rallies around and says you have to get out or anyone has to get out for purposes of rallying around Donald Trump.

[Bashar] Assad is one of the main reasons why ISIS even exists to begin with. Assad is a puppet of Iran.

We will have to work around the world with less than ideal governments. The government in Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, but we will have to work with them. The government in Jordan is not perfect, but we will have to work with them. But anti-American dictators like [Bashar] Assad, who help Hezbollah, who helped get those IEDs into Iraq, if they go, I will not shed a tear.

I think we need to simplify our tax code, but not as a way of generating revenue, as a way of making our tax code more growth- friendly.