Quotes from Erik Prince

The greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity is not al-Qaida, the Taliban, Iran or even China. It's an idea, the idea that we can spend our way out of our problems without tightening our belt and paring down the very bloated government.

I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.'s disposal for some very risky missions. But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.

I love the U.S. military. I want them to be the most effective and the most cost-effective and I think there is so much spending and so much bloat and so much bureaucracy that it actually hinders them from having a lot of the mission accomplishments that they should.

China trading with its neighbours and building infrastructure brings only benefits.

I think the diplomatic-security needs in Iraq were an anomaly. There's never been a bulge of requirements that large ever before.

I believe there is significant overreach by the NSA in how it monitors American citizens.

I'm going to teach high school. History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.

We have kind of turned our back on the fact that hard work, sacrifice, risk-taking, innovation, is what made America great.

I never intended to be a defense contractor in the first place.

Let's stop trading freedom for the illusion of security.

I would rather deal with the vagaries of investing in Africa than in figuring out what the hell else Washington is going to do to the entrepreneur next.

Developing good investments in Africa is by and large the best for the people of Africa that have a job, that have electricity, that might have clean water, that might have those things that we in the West take horribly for granted.

Sometimes motorists do irrational things.

America is a great nation, but it cannot spend blood and treasure endlessly.

In Joe Yorio you find a guy who's smarter at business than I am. I'm an entrepreneur and idea guy; he's a professional businessman.

If I could send a message back to my younger self, it would be: Do not work for the State Department at all.

The left wants to protect social programs, the right wants to protect defense and intelligence spending and all the rest. I say the defense and intelligence world will be better off with a smaller budget. They would be less encumbered by bloat and able to maneuver the way they used to be able and not trip over themselves.

Troops fighting for their lives should not have to ask a lawyer sitting in air conditioning 500 miles away for permission to drop a bomb.

I'm an American working for America. Anything we do is to support U.S. policy. You know the definition of a mercenary is a professional soldier that works in the pay of a foreign army. I'm an American working for America.

Our nation has endured and flourished because people of goodwill adapt and innovate productive solutions to our nation's problems - not because of top-down dictates.

I'm not a huge believer that government provides a whole lot of solutions.

I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.

Very few people know someone who would voluntarily go into a war zone to protect a person he has never met. I know 1,000 of them, and I am proud that they are part of our team.

We now know that gun-free zones, though well intentioned, do not prevent attacks.