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.

Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don't have to buy from a foreign source.

It's a Tenth Amendment issue. If you want Washington, if you want to implement their standards, that's your call... We certainly had higher standards than Common Core, so it was a very easy decision for Texans, myself and the legislature included, to basically say we still believe that Texans know how to best run Texas.

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.

Abstinence works, I know it from my own personal life, abstinence works.

I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses.

But if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children, because they will become a drag on our society.