Top 160 Jesse Ventura Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “With freedom comes responsibility.”

— Jesse Ventura

2. “I love my country, not my government.”

— Jesse Ventura

3. “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.”

— Jesse Ventura

4. “I ain’t got time to bleed.”

— Jesse Ventura

5. “Now our biggest environmental problems come from our own actions, our own choices, rather than pollution produced by big business.”

— Jesse Ventura

6. “If you don’t vote, then you may be leaving the decisions up to someone dumber than you.”

— Jesse Ventura

7. “I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you’d want them to treat you...”

— Jesse Ventura

8. “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business.”

— Jesse Ventura

9. “You want to know my definition of gun control? Being able to stand there at 25 meters and put two rounds in the same hole. That’s gun control.”

— Jesse Ventura

10. “Listening is as important as talking. If you’re a good listener, people often compliment you for being a good conversationalist...”

— Jesse Ventura

11. “There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag.”

— Jesse Ventura

12. “In the last recession, 99 percent of us have lost wealth, but did you know that the top 1 percent increased their wealth five times? It tells you they create recessions so they get wealthier.”

— Jesse Ventura

13. “I would rather be uncomfortable with the truth than to be lied to in comfort. That’s just my nature.”

— Jesse Ventura

14. “Jobs are created in the private sector. Not by the president or the government unless they’re government jobs.”

— Jesse Ventura

15. “Learn from history or you’re doomed to repeat it.”

— Jesse Ventura

16. “Mexico has strict gun control. You cannot own a gun in Mexico.”

— Jesse Ventura

17. “Let’s remember, the CIA’s job is to go out and create wars.”

— Jesse Ventura

18. “When you reach a certain age in life, time becomes more important than money, and I think that happens in your 50s.”

— Jesse Ventura

19. “I will never stand for a national anthem again. I will turn my back and I will raise a fist.”

— Jesse Ventura

20. “My father used to always say to me that, you know, if a guy goes out to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family, they’ll give him 10 years, but a guy can do white-collar crime and steal the money of thousands and he’ll get probation and a slap on the wrist.”

— Jesse Ventura

21. “If I could be reincarnated as a fabric, I would come back as a 38 double-D bra.”

— Jesse Ventura

22. “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people.”

— Jesse Ventura

23. “Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it’s run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it’s legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.”

— Jesse Ventura

24. “I’m a warrior at heart; I’m an ex-Navy Seal. I’m too old to wage war anymore, and so now I wage it mentally. And so I find politics very stimulating; it’s war without guns.”

— Jesse Ventura

25. “How come life in prison doesn’t mean life? Until it does, we’re not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of “punishment” for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers.”

— Jesse Ventura

26. “There’s no question that we need tougher drunk-driving laws for repeat offenders. We need to take a lesson from European countries where driving isn’t a right but a privilege.”

— Jesse Ventura

27. “A war is justified if you’re willing to send your son. If you’re not willing to send your son, then how do you send someone else’s?”

— Jesse Ventura

28. “Wrestling is ballet with violence.”

— Jesse Ventura

29. “You have to accept the rule of law, even when it’s inconvenient, if you’re going to be a country that bides by the rule of law.”

— Jesse Ventura

30. “The first thing out of Fidel Castro’s mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You’re a man of great courage.’”

— Jesse Ventura

31. “I believe that the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin are two of the greatest rock bands ever!”

— Jesse Ventura

32. “I don’t support communism. I don’t like that type of government.”

— Jesse Ventura

33. “If you work for the federal government, the average salary is $7,000 higher than the private sector. Something’s wrong with that, when you’re making more money working for the government than you can working in the private sector.”

— Jesse Ventura

34. “Let me say this: I’m paranoid of the government. They’ve lost my trust. They’ve lied to me so many times that I don’t know what to believe from them anymore.”

— Jesse Ventura

35. “I think the founding fathers believed religion shouldn’t interact directly with government.”

— Jesse Ventura

36. “If you tell the truth, you don’t need a long memory.”

— Jesse Ventura

37. “Remember that government doesn’t earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.”

— Jesse Ventura

38. “Liberty is security. Freedom is security.”

— Jesse Ventura

39. “Patriotism is voluntary. It is a feeling of loyalty and allegiance that is the result of knowledge and belief. A patriot shows their their patriotism through their actions, by their choice.”

— Jesse Ventura

40. “I will not be a Democrat or a Republican. They are the problem, not the solution. We need to abolish political parties in this country.”

— Jesse Ventura

41. “The Constitution guarantees us our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s all. It doesn’t guarantee our rights to charity.”

— Jesse Ventura

42. “I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government’s business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me.”

— Jesse Ventura

43. “It’s convenient how everyone who supports waterboarding and torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques” as they like to call it, have never experienced it themselves. Yet everyone who has, myself included, are firmly against it.”

— Jesse Ventura

44. “Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful.”

— Jesse Ventura

45. “You need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it’s like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out.”

— Jesse Ventura

46. “Personally, I think Julian Assange is a hero.”

— Jesse Ventura

47. “Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people’s tuition for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me.”

— Jesse Ventura

48. “Sarah Palin’s a quitter.”

— Jesse Ventura

49. “If I wanna be president, I probably can.”

— Jesse Ventura

50. “WikiLeaks is exposing our government officials for the frauds that they are. They also show us how governments work together to lie to their citizens when they are waging war.”

— Jesse Ventura