Chris Christie Country Quotations

I believe we have become paralyzed, paralyzed by our desire to be loved. Now our founding fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity were fleeing, and that this country's principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and the emotions of the times.

Today, the biggest challenge we must meet is the one we present to ourselves. To not become a nation that places entitlement ahead of accomplishment. To not become a country that places comfortable lies ahead of difficult truths. To not become a people that thinks so little of ourselves that we demand no sacrifice from each other.

The job of a leader, the job of a governor, the job of a president, is to get the people in the room and bang enough heads together and rub enough arms and cajole enough to have them put the country and the state's greater interest ahead of their own personal partisan interest. That's what we did in New Jersey and that's the model for America.

The three top issues have to be restoring jobs and private sector job growth to our country, getting the entitlement mess under control, and restoring back to our country a sense of self-confidence that Americans can achieve whatever we want to achieve.

This country pays a price whenever our economy fails to deliver rising living standards to our citizens - which is exactly what has been the case for years now. We pay a price when our political system cannot come together and agree on the difficult but necessary steps to rein in entitlement spending or reform our tax system.

I absolutely believe that, come November 2012, I'm going to be governor of New Jersey and not in any other office. But the fact of the matter is, if Gov. Romney, who's going to be our nominee, picked up the phone and called me to talk about this, I love my country enough and I love my party enough to listen.

When people run a business and open their door to the public, they must serve the public. That doesn't mean they can't say whatever they want to say. It doesn't mean they can't believe whatever they want to believe. Those are protected also. But businesses must serve the public. And that's a principle that we fought for in this country over many, many decades, when some were invoking religious freedom as an excuse to deny people on the basis of their race, on the basis of their religion, on the basis of sex and on the basis now of sexual orientation. Let's not confuse one thing with the other.

Leadership is not about me, it's about our country.

This president [Barack Obama] has had weak leadership, which has led to bad choices. We have got to stop worrying about being loved and start worrying about being respected. And that's exactly how I'll lead our country.

It's perfectly legal in this country to change your mind, but when you're a governor you have to admit it. You can't hide behind parliamentary tricks. That's the difference and that's the kind of leader we need in the White House. Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done!

We have people across this country who are scared to death. Because I could tell you this, as a former federal prosecutor, if a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California, is now a target for terrorists, that means everywhere in America is a target for these terrorists.

What is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton done to this country? That the most basic responsibility of an administration is to protect the safety and security of the American people.

America has been betrayed. We've been betrayed by the leadership that Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have provided to this country over the last number of years. Think about just what's happened today.

New Jersey was threatened like no other region in this country and what we did was we took action within the constitution to make sure that law enforcement had all the information they needed.

We have to put America's security first. The American people - we on this stage need to open our ears. We need to open our ears. The American people are not whispering to us. They are screaming to us. And they're screaming to us that it's our job to actually make this government work.It's so dysfunctional under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It's so ineffective. It's so ineffectual that the American people say, we don't trust them to do anything anymore. So I'm not going to let Syrian refugees, any Syrian refugees in this country.

When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching....They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn't understand their pain, and doesn't have any plan for getting away from it.

Terrorism - radical jihadist terrorism is not theoretical to me. It's real. And for seven years, I spent my life protecting our country against another one of those attacks. You won't have to worry when I'm President of the Untied States whether that can be done because I've already done it. I want the chance to do it again to protect you, your children and your families.

Now there's going to be some decisions [Donald Trump] is going to have to make as president regarding those folks, and I think what he's said let's first get all of the bad actors out of the country. And I think that's what's really important.

This is a guy [Donald Trump] who has been very consistent on no amnesty, no legalization, for folks who have been coming to the country illegally.

[Donald Trump] will appoint an attorney general, who will send very clear messages about how law enforcement is to be pursued in this country.

We need to support our police officers and make sure that community policing becomes something that becomes the standard across the country.

And Donald Trump is not going to give in to the special interests in this country, like the teachers' union, who say that substandard education in our urban areas can only be fixed by giving it more money and that that's all they're going to do about it and not change the underlying problems that we have on violence.

The message [of Donald Trump ] is that if anybody lives in those circumstances in this country, that's something that the government should be working to try to change.

I think what Donald [Trump] is saying is that it's unacceptable to him that members of the African-American community - and I'm sure he will say this about other communities as well - who live in violence, who are subject of that, or who do not have the educational opportunities that every child in this country should have so they can reach their fullest potential, that that's unacceptable.

I think what he [Donald Trump] has said is that people are not going to be eligible for legalization or citizenship unless they leave the country and get back in line.

I think that Donald Trump has been very clear on this. We're not going to have amnesty . What we're going to do is to get those who are breaking the law out of the country as quickly as possible to make sure then that you deal with people in a humane way. I think that's what he's been saying.

And I just think that we're at a point in our economic life here in our state - and - and, candidly, across the country, where increased taxes is just the wrong way to go. The people of our state are not convinced that state government, county government, local government has done all they can with the money we already give them, rather than the money that we have before.

I'm going to be specific so you can render your verdict. Let's go to North Africa, she was the chief engineer of the disastrous overthrow of [Muamar] Qaddafi in Libya. Libya today after Hillary Clinton's grand strategy? Their economy's in ruins. There's death and violence on the streets, and ISIS is now dominating that country.

Everybody in America has to be part of a shared sacrifice to create opportunity for greatness again for our people and our country.

America under Barack Obama has become a defensive, reactive and weaker country both at home and abroad.