Top 150 Paul Ryan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, ‘I haven’t communicated enough.’ He said his job is to ‘tell a story to the American people’ – as if that’s the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?”

— Paul Ryan

52. “Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems. And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this.”

— Paul Ryan

53. “We need leadership. We don’t need a doubling down on the failed politics of the past.”

— Paul Ryan

54. “The debt and the deficit is just getting out of control, and the administration is still pumping through billions upon trillions of new spending. That does not grow the economy.”

— Paul Ryan

55. “We don’t have a tax revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem in Washington.”

— Paul Ryan

56. “We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility.”

— Paul Ryan

57. “That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

— Paul Ryan

58. “Hope and change? We’re not doing that anymore. They’re doing attack and blame. And so, I just think people are going to see through this. They want real leadership. They want us to get this country on the right track.”

— Paul Ryan

59. “Our two party platforms were emphatic about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel. For the Obama administration to remove this language from the Democratic Party platform drives a wedge into one of the few issues that our two parties agreed on.”

— Paul Ryan

60. “In a justly organized community, however, government exists to secure the right to life and the other human rights that follow from that primary right.”

— Paul Ryan

61. “When you take a look at the problems our country is facing, debt is No. 1. The math is downright scary and the credit markets aren’t going to keep on giving us cheap rates.”

— Paul Ryan

62. “If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

— Paul Ryan

63. “Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.”

— Paul Ryan

64. “I see myself as more of a policy maker than a political leader.”

— Paul Ryan

65. “A bold reform agenda is our moral obligation. If we make the case effectively and win this November, then we will have the moral authority to enact the kind of fundamental reforms America has not seen since Ronald Reagan’s first year.”

— Paul Ryan

66. “The rate of return on Social Security for people nearing retirement is about 1.5 percent. By the time young children like mine are ready to retire, that rate of return will be a negative percentage.”

— Paul Ryan

67. “We wonder if we will be the first generation in American history to leave our children with fewer opportunities and a less prosperous nation than the one we inherited.”

— Paul Ryan

68. “Free enterprise empowers entrepreneurs who have ideas and imagination, investors who take risks, and workers who hone their skills and offer their labor.”

— Paul Ryan

69. “Americans are better off in a dynamic, free-enterprise-based economy that fosters economic growth, opportunity and upward mobility instead of a stagnant, government-directed economy that stifles job creation and fosters government dependency.”

— Paul Ryan

70. “The moral case for individual initiative in a free economy holds that people have a God-given right to use their creativity to produce things that improve our lives.”

— Paul Ryan

71. “Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature’s God, not from government.”

— Paul Ryan

72. “Republicans have offered dozens of comprehensive healthcare plans many of which achieve comprehensive healthcare reform without breaking what’s working in healthcare. We want to fix what’s broken in healthcare.”

— Paul Ryan

73. “We need to reclaim our American system of limited government, low taxes, reasonable regulations, and sound money, which has blessed us with unprecedented prosperity. And it has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.”

— Paul Ryan

74. “President Obama clearly cannot run on his record. All he’s offering is more of the same. That’s not good. Look at the economy. It’s stagnating. And so, what they’re now going to try and do is bring this campaign down to little things, distractions, distortions, smear, fear, anger, frustration.”

— Paul Ryan

75. “What I’m concerned about is endless borrowing, which is going to compromise our economy not only today but in the future. Because we know the decisions we make right now really dramatically impact us in the future, and the debt is literally getting out of our control.”

— Paul Ryan

76. “Elections have consequences. And I fundamentally believe – this is my personal opinion, I know it’s a slightly partisan thing to say – to really do what we think needs to be done, we’re going to have to win some elections.”

— Paul Ryan

77. “I don’t want to get into the ‘who’s a hostage-taker’ discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It’s a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it’s really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it’s a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.”

— Paul Ryan

78. “College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”

— Paul Ryan

79. “Here’s the problem if you keep raising tax rates: You slow down economic growth.”

— Paul Ryan

80. “By failing seriously to confront the most predicable economic crisis in our nation’s history, the President’s policies are committing us and our children to a diminished future.”

— Paul Ryan

81. “My Dad, a small-town lawyer, was also named Paul. Until we lost him when I was 16, he was a gentle presence in my life. I like to think he’d be proud of me and my sister and brothers, because I’m sure proud of him and of where I come from, Janesville, Wisconsin.”

— Paul Ryan

82. “Either we have the government forcing us and telling us what we have to do, where we have to do it and how much we have to pay for it or we put ourselves in charge – we as consumers, as patients.”

— Paul Ryan

83. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.”

— Paul Ryan

84. “And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them.”

— Paul Ryan

85. “We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years.”

— Paul Ryan

86. “Working together, America’s military, Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people have won a major battle in the war on terrorism.”

— Paul Ryan

87. “After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.”

— Paul Ryan

88. “You’re going to hear a lot from President Obama and yes, from Joe Biden, you’re hearing a little bit about Medicare these days. What they will not tell you is they turned Medicare into a piggybank to fund ‘Obamacare.’ They took $716 billion dollars to pay for the ‘Obamacare’ program.”

— Paul Ryan

89. “Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity – and I know we can do this.”

— Paul Ryan

90. “We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles.”

— Paul Ryan

91. “A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my Mom’s generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours.”

— Paul Ryan

92. “In government-directed economies, the collective takes priority over the individual. The moral ideal is equal results. That approach could not be further removed from the real world.”

— Paul Ryan

93. “Let’s pass a bill to cover the moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. And then let’s pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion.”

— Paul Ryan

94. “The belief that recipients of government aid are better off the more we spend on them is remarkably persistent. No matter how many times this central tenet of liberalism gets debunked, like Brett Favre, it just keeps coming back.”

— Paul Ryan

95. “Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.”

— Paul Ryan

96. “I live on the same block where I grew up. We belong to the same parish where I was baptized. Janesville is that kind of place.”

— Paul Ryan

97. “When Governor Romney asked me to join the ticket, I said, ‘Let’s get this done’ – and that is exactly, what we’re going to do.”

— Paul Ryan

98. “We must solve the problem in health care by curbing out-of-control costs that erode paychecks for working families and push quality coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.”

— Paul Ryan

99. “When it comes to jobs, President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years look like good old days. If we fired Jimmy Carter then, why would we rehire Barack Obama now?”

— Paul Ryan

100. “So here’s the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?”

— Paul Ryan