My Five Favorite Ron Paul Quotes

Last updated on December 24th, 2012 at 03:03 am

ImageRon Paul will never be considered a quote machine; in fact on the surface it appears a little odd to some that this 71 year old man became the cult figure of the 2008 campaign. I think his appeal lies in the fact that candidates such as John McCain pretend to be mavericks, while Ron Paul is the real deal.

Dr. Paul is a throwback to a long gone era in American politics. Paul has principles, and he sticks to them. I don’t agree with many of his views, but I believe that Ron Paul is a man who should be respected and admired for his political courage. As with the other two parts of this series, these quotes are not organized in any particular way, and my only agenda is that you enjoy them.

“However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policies of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.”

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— Paul predicting the housing crisis on the House floor, 7/16/02

“They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. … We’ve been in the Middle East.”

— South Carolina Debate, May 2007

“However, monitoring the transactions of every American in order to catch those few who are involved in some sort of illegal activity turns one of the great bulwarks of our liberty, the presumption of innocence, on its head. The federal government has no right to treat all Americans as criminals by spying on their relationship with their doctors, employers, or bankers. In fact, criminal law enforcement is reserved to the state and local governments by the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.”

— Comments on the House floor 5/22/01

“Values in a free society are accepted voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by law… every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun, because if you desecrate the flag, you have to punish that person. So how do you do that? You send an agent of the government, perhaps an employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Flags, to arrest him. This is in many ways patriotism with a gun – if your actions do not fit the official definition of a “patriot,” we will send somebody to arrest you.”

— Paul speaking against the proposed Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning on June 3, 2003.

“If we can’t or won’t define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice? […] I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.”

— Speaking on the House floor, September 25, 2001



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