Top 40 Mitch Daniels Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose.”

— Mitch Daniels

2. “We are taking challenges and turning them into opportunities by developing homegrown, local energy production to become independent from foreign sources.”

— Mitch Daniels

3. “Our first thought is always for those on life’s first rung, and how we might increase their chances of climbing.”

— Mitch Daniels

4. “If freedom’s best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come.”

— Mitch Daniels

5. “Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand.”

— Mitch Daniels

6. “The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity.”

— Mitch Daniels

7. “We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”

— Mitch Daniels

8. “All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty.”

— Mitch Daniels

9. “Starting a new retirement plan for those below a certain age is something tens of millions of Americans have already been through at work.”

— Mitch Daniels

10. “I refer to the debt – the new red menace. This time consisting of ink.”

— Mitch Daniels

11. “I certainly believe in limited government but protecting children against injury abuse is certainly inside my sphere of things that the government should do.”

— Mitch Daniels

12. “No enterprise, small or large, public or private, can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be.”

— Mitch Daniels

13. “My record is, far as I know, unimpeachable.”

— Mitch Daniels

14. “Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms.”

— Mitch Daniels

15. “There is nothing inconsistent about having a conservative outlook and being vigorous.”

— Mitch Daniels

16. “I took a vow of political celibacy.”

— Mitch Daniels

17. “Every citizen who stops smoking, or loses a few pounds, or starts managing his chronic disease with real diligence, is caulking a crack for the benefit of us all.”

— Mitch Daniels

18. “I believe that the Right to Work issue is a perfectly appropriate one for Indiana to look at.”

— Mitch Daniels

19. “We are tasked to rebuild not just a damaged economy, and a debt-ridden balance sheet, but to do so by drawing forth the best that is in our fellow citizens. If we would summon the best from Americans, we must assume the best about them. If we don’t believe in Americans, who will?”

— Mitch Daniels

20. “The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.”

— Mitch Daniels

21. “Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.”

— Mitch Daniels

22. “So tonight I propose one more step that I would rather not propose. I ask the most fortunate among us, those citizens earning over $100,000 per year, for one year, to pay an additional one percent on the income they receive.”

— Mitch Daniels

23. “If we don’t believe in Americans, who will? I do believe. I’ve seen it in the people of our very typical corner of the nation.”

— Mitch Daniels

24. “We designed both our state employee health plans and the one we created for low-income Hoosiers as Health Savings Accounts, and now in the tens of thousands these citizens are proving that they are fully capable of making smart, consumerist choices about their own health care.”

— Mitch Daniels

25. “The president’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.”

— Mitch Daniels

26. “We don’t have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration.”

— Mitch Daniels

27. “Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.”

— Mitch Daniels

28. “We believe that government works for the benefit of private life, and not the other way around.”

— Mitch Daniels

29. “As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder.”

— Mitch Daniels

30. “We see government’s mission as fostering and enabling the important realms – our businesses, service clubs, Little Leagues, churches – to flourish.”

— Mitch Daniels

31. “Anything that strengthens the private sector vs. the state is protective of personal freedom.”

— Mitch Daniels

32. “When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: ‘Make money. Go make money. That’s the first act of corporate citizenship. If you do that, you’ll have to hire someone else, and you’ll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we’re so proud of.’”

— Mitch Daniels

33. “We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.”

— Mitch Daniels

34. “The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.”

— Mitch Daniels

35. “A one-time tax does not get figured into people’s investment decisions.”

— Mitch Daniels

36. “We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.”

— Mitch Daniels

37. “No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.”

— Mitch Daniels

38. “The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.”

— Mitch Daniels

39. “Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery.”

— Mitch Daniels

40. “I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic.”

— Mitch Daniels

41. “The public is increasingly disgusted with a steady diet of defamation, and prepared to reward those who refrain from it.”

— Mitch Daniels