Newt Gingrich

The secular elites are so terrified of telling the truth about radical Islam. When you talk about the radical Islamists, we have got to get straight and get serious and talk about it in the right way.

I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people's religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought to all oppose burning the Koran.

You can't trust anybody with power.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

One morning, just like 9/11, there's going to be a disaster. I have yet to see the United Nations do anything effective with either Iran or North Korea.

Only the elites despise earning money.

The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual I'm too abstract I think too much.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.

Surely the President can agree with us, that theft from government is not good. I know it's bold. It's out on the edge. I know from a Chicago-Springfield background it's hard to fully grasp that honesty could be part of government.

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending.

We tried to have diplomas without learning, we tried to have jobs without work, we tried to have houses without savings, we tried to have government without responsibility.

My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I'm going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results.

We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.