Being the Republican front-runner was three of the most exciting hours of my entire life. I've come to grips with it, and the only lasting effect is that I refuse to go on a stage that has more than one podium on it.

I've never struggled with that at all....in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.

I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.

I don't think we've ever had a president who has more disdain for Washington than Barack Obama does, and he does things with executive orders or rules that you don't even see.

[Under Obama,] our federal tax dollars can now be used to fund abortion all over the world. With the stroke of a pen, abortion essentially became a U.S. foreign export.

When you look around the world, every place that socialism has been implemented, it has failed miserably, destroying the economy, freedom and - in Germany, the Soviet Union and other nations - millions of lives.

We need to stop apologizing for celebrating life. We need to stop apologizing for wanting to protect an individual's right to build a business.