Jeb Bush Quotes

I don't miss politics.

I'd say my greatest weakness is impatience. I don't suffer fools well.

I've always believed that if you support reform or you support a particular idea that you ought to fund that idea first and not the system.

I have a proven record, a record of accomplishment, a record of cutting taxes, of shrinking the government, of reforming education, of challenging the status quo, eliminating career civil service protections, shrinking the government workforce by 11 percent, but leading the nation in job growth.

I'm a grinder ... I've never taken more than a week off in my adult life. I truly believe work is a virtue, it gives you purpose.

Sixty-five countries doing nothing is not a coalition. We need a strategy. That's the first and foremost thing that we need.

Florida has its own rhythm, too. People go to work, they watch their children learn and grow and start families of their own. They play in the sun and pass their lives enjoying the outsized blessings that make our state unique.

We need to end the government monopoly in education by transferring power from bureaucracies and unions to families. The era of defining public education as allegiance to centralized school districts must end.

If we're going to ban all Muslims, how are we going to get them to be part of a coalition to destroy ISIS?

I've been critical of Hillary Clinton and [Barack] Obama, for sure. But John McCain had a proven record as a senator. He also ran for president [in 2016]. But he got a lot of stuff done while he was a United States senator and still does.

They [terrorists] have declared war on us and we need to have a serious strategy to destroy ISIS.

People are moping around and I think campaigns can be about lifting the spirits of the American people.

I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida.

I don't know if I'm a national education figure.

We mustn't assume that we are going to deinvent government solely from inside the Beltway or within one or two sessions of Congress. We will do it one step at a time, in one community at a time - at the local level and through local institutions like churches, nonprofit and volunteer organizations and families.

Why would our president close the embassy to the Vatican? Hopefully, it is not retribution for Catholic organizations opposing Obamacare.

States are free to modify the Common Core State Standards or adopt their own individual standards, because academic standards are the prerogative of the states.

There are cultural reasons, economic competitiveness reasons. There are a lot of reasons why people are in poverty. The difference today is that increasingly they are in perpetual poverty.

If you set a tone that you don't want people to be part of your team, they don't join.

I would say national security is work in progress.

I think life is precious from beginning to end.

If you have to deal with our friends at ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it's like a Kafka novel. Files just disappear.

Barack Obama became president, and he abandoned Iraq. He left, and when he left Al Qaida was done for. ISIS was created because of the void that we left, and that void now exists as a caliphate the size of Indiana.

I've been so blessed to be part of a family that has dedicated its life to public service.

We need to embed our forces - our troops inside the Iraqi military. We need to arm directly the Kurds. And all of that has to be done in concert with the Arab nations.

I think Detroit would do real well if we started repopulating it with young, aspirational people.

There is no other country that has the Cuban Adjustment Act; that's why it's called the Cuban Adjustment Act and not the Nicaraguan Adjustment Act.

The president receives an inspector general's report that the Office of Personnel Management could be hacked into; they had antiquated firewalls; 23 million files have been - are in the hands of the Chinese allegedly, including, by the way, members of the press, it turns out, last week. Maybe that's the only part that's good news, so that you guys can get a feel for what it's like now to see this type of attack.

To me, Jeb Bush is hitting his stride. He was the most composed, the most endpoint, the most in control, I've seen him in an interview yet. And it's not because I wasn't asking him tough questions

I used to be a conservative ...

I think I can fix the problems in Washington that people desperately want to see fixed.

I don't think a party can aspire to be the majority party if it's the old white guy party.

I love my brother, I love my dad, actually love my mother as well, hope that's ok. And I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make.

You can love the Mexican culture, you can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe that we need to control the border.

Candidates are making lasting impressions on voters, not just primary voters, in how they campaign.

You find me a Democrat that's for cutting spending $10 and I'll give them a warm kiss.

I've never heard anybody in my family say anything but good things about Rick Perry.

Everything's viewed with a political lens in Washington, and that's just the nature of the beast, and it is what it is.

I think people have good ideas on this. Clearly, we need to secure the border. Coming here legally needs to be a lot easier than coming here illegally.

I kinda miss Donald Trump, he was a little teddy bear to me.

Work needs to be the single biggest requirements. No more waivers as this administration has done. There should be real work eligibility.

What we have in Washington is total gridlock.

It is a serious undertaking and yes, we do need more fencing and we do need to use technology, and we do need more border control. And we need to have better cooperation by the way with local law enforcement. There are 800,000 cops on the beat, they ought to be trained to be the eyes and ears for law enforcement for the threat against terror as well as for immigration.

As president, I will keep you and our country safe, secure, and free.

Banning all Muslims will make it harder for us to do exactly what we need to do, which is to destroy ISIS. We need a strategy. We need to get the lawyers off the back of the warfighters.

I think the voters can make up their own minds.

The dual effect of high growth creating higher income that's taxed by government at all levels, combined with lessening demands placed on government that occurs during economic prosperity, is a worthy objective.

To honor the people that died, we need to stop the Iran agreement, for sure, because the Iranian mullahs have their blood on their hands, and we need to take out ISIS with every tool at our disposal.

Former Secretary (Hillary) Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy. These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year's Liberty Medal.

To bring about a genuine political realignment, Republicans must kill the Government Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs - the very Goose they have fought so hard and long to possess.

This is a tough business to run for president.

If we want to destroy radical Islamic terrors, we can't disassociate ourselves from peace loving Muslims.

Obama doesn't believe in American leadership and the net result is we have a caliphate the size of Indiana.

If I can help create an environment where the principles that I believe in can be implemented - to me, that's fulfilling.

I have never wavered from my intention to advance the cause of diversity in new and more effective ways.

We need a serious leader to deal with this. And I believe I'm that guy.

The next Republican that will win will campaign in the Latino community, will campaign amongst Asian-Americans, will campaign in the black churches, will campaign in college campuses.

We need to destroy ISIS in the caliphate. That's - that should be our objective. The refugee issue will be solved if we destroy ISIS there, which means we need to have a no-fly zone, safe zones there for refugees and to build a military force.

We've got to be willing to lose the primary in order to win the general election.

We need to focus our energies there, not these broad, blanket, kind of statements that will make it harder for us to deal with ISIS. We need to deal with ISIS in the caliphate. We need a strategy to destroy ISIS there. You can't do that without the cooperation of the Muslim world because they're as threatened as we are.

You tell me which society is going to be the winner in this 21st Century: One that worries about how we feel or the one that worries about making sure that the next generation has the capacity to eat everybody's lunch.

I'm working hard to be president of the United States.I'm running to change things, and I'm not going to be part of the political class in Washington, D.C. I have the skills to disrupt the old order and bring about a new culture.

We need to focus on building a military that is second-to-none so that we can destroy Islamic terrorism.

I believe that I have the executive experience and the ideas and the proven record to fix things.

I think my dad's post-presidency, he didn't miss a beat. He didn't get into any kind of 'Woe is me.' He dusted himself off and led an incredible life since 1993.

We now have a national security consideration, public health issues, we have an epidemic of heroine overdoses in all places in this country because of the ease of bringing heroine in. We have to secure the border.

We need to increase our military spending. We need to deal with a no- fly zone in Syria, a safe zone.

Treating people fairly and with civility is not a bad thing ... It would be good for our country if political leaders actually took that to heart.

We now have a lack of readiness that is quite scary. We have planes that were - that Harry Truman inaugurated, the B-52. We have - the Navy has been gutted and decimated. The readiness of the Marines is way down.

Who among us has never looked up into the heavens on a starlit night, lost in wonder at the vastness of space and the beauty of the stars?

I'm getting nervous to be called a centrist. Breaking out in a rash.

It comes down to a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother, and I'm going with the Sisters.

My wife is not a public person. She is uncomfortable with the limelight, which is why I love her. I don't want a political wife - I want someone who, when I get home, I can have a normal life with.

When businesses go through hard times, through down markets, what do they do is they challenge every basic assumption of how they operate. They innovate. They create disruption for a while that leads them to even greater heights when the economy turns around.

Is Islam a religion of peace? I'm sure for some of the practitioners, but it's been hijacked by people who have an ideology that wants to destroy western civilization, and they're barbarians.

Every weapons system has been gutted.

Two months ago Donald Trump said that ISIS was not our fight. Just two months ago he said that Hillary Clinton would be a great negotiator with Iran. And he gets his foreign policy experience from the shows.

Never again can the Republican Party simply write off entire segments of our society because we assume our principles have limited appeal. They have broad appeal. We need to be larger than that.

It's not possible in a free country to completely control the border without us losing our freedoms and liberties.

They [illegal immigrants] broke the law, but it's not a felony, it's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family.

The United States Constitution is clear. It prohibits religious tests for public office.

The real problem is Barack Obama has had six years to advocate a position to fix this and he's done nothing. The congress has funded these programs of building more fencing and doing all this and he hasn't done it.

It's hard to be a son of a candidate. It's hard to be a brother of a candidate. I think it may be the hardest thing to be the dad of the candidate.

I don't believe the federal government should be involved in the creation of standards directly or indirectly, the creation of curriculum or content. It is clearly a state responsibility.

Look, I am in the establishment because my dad, the greatest man alive was president of the United States and my brother, who I adore as well as fantastic brother was president. Fine, I'll take it. I guess I'm part of the establishment Barbara Bush is my mom. I'll take that, too.

I do have the strength. Leadership, leadership is not about attacking people and disparaging people. Leadership is about creating a serious strategy to deal with the threat of our time.

Life teaches you that you need to make decisions in the right time - not too early, not too late.

Immigrants are more fertile.

We should have a path to legal status for the 12 million people that are here illegally. It means, come out from the shadows, pay a fine, earn legal status by working, by paying taxes, learning English. Not committing crimes and earn legal status where you're not cutting in front of the line for people that are patiently waiting outside.

There are important questions about protecting and securing the border, but we don't need to build a wall.

Everybody who aspires to high positions of leadership in their state and in their country should be willing to take unscreened, unrehearsed questions from the people who pay their salary.

You have to maintain your principles but have a broader appeal.

I don't know about you, but I'm betting that when it comes to doing the right and good thing, the Little Sisters of the Poor know better than the regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Hillary Clinton is using a private server for - where classified information go by. This is a - this is a serious administration?

A lot of things in history change over time.

I have a blessed life.

As governor, I saw the link between economic prosperity and the ability to acquire knowledge.

The main thing we should be focused on is the strategy to destroy ISIS. And I laid out a plan that the Reagan Library before the tragedy of Paris, and before San Bernardino to do just that. It requires leadership, it's not filing an amendment and call it a success.

[Barack Obama] believes climate change is a bigger threat to our country than these barbaric Islamic terrorists that have as their organizing principle the destruction of Western civilization.

In Washington, particularly, the loyal opposition has a job to be the opposition. But you can't stop there.