I'm pleased that I've balanced budgets. I was on the world of business for 25 years. If you didn't balance your budget, you went out of business. I went into the Olympics that was out of balance, and we got it on balance, and made a success there. I had the chance to be governor of a state. Four years in a row, Democrats and Republicans came together to balance the budget. We cut taxes 19 times and balanced our budget.

Those who have come to the United States illegally should not be given amnesty or an easier path to citizenship over those already in line.

It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!

I met a guy yesterday, 7 feet tall. Yeah, handsome, great big guy, 7 feet tall! ... I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport.

When the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.

I'm a big believer in getting money from where the money is, and the money is in Washington. I learned from running the Olympics that you can get money there to help build economic opportunities. We actually got over $410 million from the federal government; that is a huge increase over anything ever done before. We did that by going after every agency of government. That kind of creativity I want to bring to everything we do (in Massachusetts).

We have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.