Quotes from Mitt Romney

I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.

I hope people understand that when you tax corporations that the concrete and the steel and the plastic don't pay. People pay. And so when you tax corporations, either the employees are going to pay or the shareholders are going to pay or the customers are going to pay. And so corporations are people.

I'd rather see the tax for innovation reduced rather than expanded.

The biggest source of getting the country to a balanced budget is not by raising taxes or by cutting spending. It's by encouraging the growth of the economy.

I would cap the amount of federal government can spend at 20 percent of the economy. Bring it back to 20 percent or lower. And say, we are not going to spend above that level. Democrats, they want to raise your taxes and spend more and more and turn us into an economy which is no longer driven by the private sector.

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

Let me tell you, the heart of my tax proposal: I will not raise taxes on the American people. I will not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.

And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America's engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Fairness dictates that the highest income people should pay the greatest share of taxes, and they do.

I know what it takes to balance budgets. I have done it my entire life.

The economy is my wheel house.

Religious freedom opens a door for Americans that is closed to too many others around the world. But whether we walk through that door, and what we do with our lives after we do, is up to us.

Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.

A white male Mormon millionaire was not gonna beat Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, but someone deserved to go out there and give him a real run for his money.

It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.

I could have possibly beaten Senator McCain in the primary. Then I could have been the candidate who lost to Barack Obama.

A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us and we will win.

The principles that made this nation a great and powerful leader of the world, have not lost their meaning. They never will. We know we can bring this country back. I'm Mitt Romney. I believe in America. And I'm running for president of the United States.

I talk a great deal to prior Secretaries of State about policy issues.

You balance the budget by restraining the growth of government and encouraging the growth of the private sector.

Isn't it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?

I spent my whole life in the private sector, 25 years in the private sector. I understand that when government takes more money out of the hands of people, it makes it more difficult for them to buy things. If they can't buy things, the economy doesn't grow. If the economy doesn't grow, we don't put Americans to work.

I would love to say to all Americans: 'Each candidate is going to produce a film of an hour and a half. You're going to watch one from each candidate, and then you're going to vote!'

If you believe the disappointments - if you believe the disappointments in the last few years are a detour and not our destiny, then I'm asking for your vote.