Rand Paul Quotes

It's a little different when you spend 30 years developing all these companies that we just ask [Donald Trump] to sell them. So I don't think that's a fair request.

The only way to save Social Security is to raise the retirement age.

John McCain is the guy that has advocated for war everywhere. He would bankrupt the nation.

I don't think he fully analyzes the situation. If you destabilize [Bashar] Assad and punish Assad, you do embolden terrorists. You embolden al-Qaida because al-Qaida is on the other side of this war. So, one side wins if you destabilize the other side. So, he will be emboldening al-Qaida and the Islamic rebels. And I'm not so sure they're better than Assad.

I have a great deal of concern for any president and the amount of power they accumulate versus congress. I'm a stickler about the idea of separation of powers.

Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending.

People who want to come to this country don't have constitutional rights. Once they get here, they do. But coming here is not a constitutional right. So with do, as a nation, have the ability and should have the ability to decide who comes here and when they come here.

You can tell a person's religion 85 percent of the time from their phone records.

We have to have a more realistic foreign policy and not a utopian one where we say, oh, we're going to spread freedom and democracy, and everybody in the Middle East is going to love us. They are not going to love us.

My belief has always been that national defense is the most important thing we do, but we shouldn't borrow to pay for it.

If we believe [Obama] to be a good man who would never kill noncombatants in a cafe in Houston, sitting out in a sidewalk cafe, smoking - oh, that's right you're not allowed to smoke cigarettes anymore.

In our state, I'm really proud of the fact that the ones who overturned Jim Crow in Kentucky were Republicans fighting against an entirely unified Democrat Party. So I am proud to be Republican. I can't imagine being anything else.

We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white.

We don't have enough money to rebuild our own country if we're rebuilding everyone else's countries.

My first choice had always been my father. He's still my first pick. Now that the nominating process is over, tonight, I'm happy to announce that I'm going to be supporting Governor Romney.

I've had an interest in politics since I was a little kid.

So if we announce we're going to have a no-fly zone, and others have said this. Hillary Clinton is also for it. It is a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for World War III. We need to confront Russia from a position of strength, but we don't need to confront Russia from a point of recklessness that would lead to war.

On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up.

Overall do I believe exchange with other cultures is good, people going back and forth is good, trade is good. Yes, all of these things are good. But I think you have to make sure the system's working. We need to know, virtually 100 percent of the time, when you come and when you leave. It's called entry and exit.

I believe people ought to be treated fairly under the law. I see no reason why if the marriage contract conveys certain things that if you want to marry another woman that you can do that and have a contract. But the thing is is the religious connotation of marriage that has been going on for thousands of years, I still want to preserve that. And you probably could have both. You could have both traditional marriage, which I believe in. And then you could also have the neutrality of the law that allows people to have contracts with another.

I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government.

There is often variations of evil on both sides of the war. What we have to decide is whether or not regime change is a good idea. It's what the neoconservatives have wanted. It's what the vast majority of those on the stage want.

My goal right now is to actually help Donald Trump. He's the Republican president. He's doing a lot of things that conservatives are for. I'm for. And so my goal is to help Kentucky by repealing regulations that are killing our coal industry. And I think on that, we're very much aligned.

I think when we think about the judgment of someone who might want World War III, we might think about someone who might shut down a bridge because they don't like their friends.

I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.

Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution, and are we unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution?

What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.

The greatest threat to our national security is our debt. We borrow a million dollars a minute.

If Americans were attacked, it does change the equation. The problem is, is that with regard to this is there've been horrendous killings of civilians with conventional weapons.

We will not cut one penny from the safety net until we've cut every penny from corporate welfare.

I do want to see an immigration compromise. And you can't have an immigration compromise if everybody's out there calling the president a racist.

I was very, very concerned about President Obama and how much executive order and how much executive power he tried to exert. But I think I want to be, and I think congress will be, a check on any executive, Republican or Democrat, that tries to grasp too much power. And really, a lot of the fault is not only presidents trying to take too much power, it's Congress giving up too much power.

You can not be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.

If there are few conservatives in the senate wing of the Republican Party that will say no to a budget that never balances, we could have the power to say to the leadership, you know what, need a better budget.

When the government tries to invade the church to enforce its own opinion on [gay] marriage, that's when it's time to resist.

These attacks prove one thing for certain: the liberal establishment is desperate to keep leaders like me out of office, and we are sure to hear more wild, dishonest smears during this campaign.

The key to winning any general election in the USA is to excite your base and then expand your base - get independent voters and voters who haven't been voting for your party to come to your party.

We are borrowing $40,000 per second.

Actually we're very lucky John McCain is not in charge because I think we would be in perpetual war.

There was a conservative consensus for an amendment I put forward called Trust, But Verify that would have strengthened border security on both refugees, students and those coming here. And Marco sided and I guess was more sympathetic to Chuck Schumer and to the president than he was to conservative principles.

I think it's a mistake to downgrade and say surveillance is no big deal. It is a huge deal that we are collecting millions of Americans phone calls and that someone can go to a keyboard and put your name in and search it without a warrant.

I say not one penny more to countries that are burning our flag.

Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants. If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you.

I think what we've had in the past is the government has said, "Well, we need to collect the whole haystack." And the haystack is Americans' privacy. Every Americans' privacy. We have to give up all of our privacy.

I would have never released the sanctions [for Iran] before there was consistent evidence of compliance.

We shouldn't be fearful of freedom, we shouldn't be fearful of individual liberty.

Let's means-test benefits - let's means-test Social Security and Medicare and make the rich pay more for these benefits.

, I'm going to reserve judgment on [Rex] Tillerson. But I'll ask him the same question I've asked the others: do you understand the historic lesson that the Iraq war was a failure, a strategic mistake, that's what Donald Trump says.