Rick Santorum Quotes

Richard John Santorum is an American attorney, author, politician, and political commentator. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and was the Senate's third-ranking Republican from 2001 to 2007. He ran as a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, finishing second to Mitt Romney.

Santorum was elected as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania in 1994. He served two terms until losing his reelection bid in 2006. A Catholic, Santorum is a social conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and artificial birth control. While serving as a senator, Santorum was the author of what came to be known as the Santorum Amendment, which promoted the teaching of intelligent design. In 2005, Santorum introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act along with Senator John Kerry.

In the years following his departure from the Senate, Santorum worked as a consultant, private-practice lawyer, and news contributor. He ran for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. He exceeded expectations by winning 11 primaries and caucuses and received nearly 4 million votes, making him the runner-up to eventual nominee Mitt Romney by the time he suspended his campaign on April 10, 2012. Santorum officially endorsed Romney on May 7, 2012. He ran again in the 2016 presidential election but ended his campaign in February 2016 after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator.

✵ 10. May 1958
Rick Santorum photo
Rick Santorum: 51   quotes 1   like

Famous Rick Santorum Quotes

“I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Santorum targets blacks in entitlement reform
2012-01-02
Lucy
Madison
Political Hotsheet
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57350990-503544/santorum-targets-blacks-in-entitlement-reform/
2012-01-19

“Well, yes, absolutely, to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?”

asked why he "almost threw up" at John F. Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
2012-02-26
This Week with George Stephanopoulos
ABC
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-rick-santorum/story?id=15785514&page=5

Rick Santorum Quotes about people

“The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion.”

WSEZ interview, 2011-03-29, answering a caller's question, quoted in * Aliyah
Shahid
Rick Santorum, GOP presidential hopeful, blames Social Security problems on abortion
2011-03-30
Daily News
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-30/news/29381880_1_randall-k-o-bannon-abortion-rick-santorum
2011-04-15

“The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.”

Interview with the Associated Press, 2003-04-07
Excerpt from Santorum interview
USA Today
2003-04-23
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-23-santorum-excerpt_x.htm
2011-09-01

“I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities — it's several, I think it's seven or eight of the California system of universities don't even teach an American history course. It's not even available to be taught. Just to tell you how bad it’s gotten in this country, where we're trying to disconnect the American people from the roots of who we are, so they have an understanding of what America should be.”

2012-04-02
Santorum Claims "Seven Or Eight" Univ. California Schools Don't Teach American History
Meenal
Vamburkar
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/online/santorum-claims-seven-or-eight-univ-california-schools-dont-teach-american-history/
2012-04-10
2012-04-03
Rick Santorum Speaks from His Heart - California Colleges
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
Television
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/411675/april-03-2012/rick-santorum-speaks-from-his-heart---california-colleges
2012-04-10

“In the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you’re elderly and the bracelet is ‘do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, that they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”

During a forum at the Grace Bible Church in Columbia moderated by James Dobson
Santorum’s Bogus Euthanasia Claims
Michael & Kiely, Eugene
Morse
2012-02-22
FactCheck.org
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/santorums-bogus-euthanasia-claims/
2012-02-26
2012-03-15
Indecision 2012 - Rick Santorum Visits Puerto Rico and Speaks from His Heart
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
Television
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/410721/march-15-2012/indecision-2012---rick-santorum-visits-puerto-rico-and-speaks-from-his-heart
2012-04-10

“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob! There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor and trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college: he wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”

speech at Americans for Prosperity Tea Party event at Troy, Michigan,
referring to President Obama saying, in his first address to Congress in , "Tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be a community college or a four-year school, vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma."
2012-02-25
Rick Santorum: Obama Is ‘A Snob’ For Wanting Everyone To Go To College
James
Crugnale
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rick-santorum-obama-is-a-snob-for-wanting-everyone-to-go-to-college/

“I mean people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings […] There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Interview with KTAE television, September 4, 2005, referring to Hurricane Katrina.
Senator suggests penalties for survivors who stayed in flood zone
Raw Story
2005-09-06
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senator_suggests_penalties_for_survivors_who_stayed_in_flo_0906.html

Rick Santorum Quotes about thinking

Rick Santorum: Trending quotes

“We will never have the elite, smart people on our side”

speech at Values Voter Summit http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81256_Page4.html,
Context: We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do. So our colleges and universities, they're not going to be on our side.

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the eye to come back to the United States.”

Santorum defends Iraq war
Bucks County Courier Times
2006-10-17
Alison
Hawkes
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-10172006-728120.html

Rick Santorum Quotes

“Early in my political career, I had an opportunity to read the speech and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.”

at College of St. Mary Magdalen,
on John F. Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

“We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig– uh, the – America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong.”

2012-03-30
Rick Santorum: another slip of the tongue but was it the 'N-word'?
Paul
Harris
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/30/rick-santorum-slip-n-word
2012-04-03

“Marriage is what marriage is. Marriage existed before there was a government. It's like, you know, handing up this and saying this glass of water is a glass of beer. Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it's not a glass of beer. It's a glass of water. And water is what water is. Marriage is what marriage is.”

Santorum: Marriage Is Like Water, Not Beer
2011-08-09
Think Progress LGBT
Think Progress
Igor
Volsky
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/08/09/292121/santorum-marriage-is-like-water-not-beer/
2011-08-28

“Well, as a matter of fact, I've voted to kill Big Bird in the past. So, I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn't mean I don't like Big Bird. I mean, you can kill things and still like them. I mean, maybe to eat them, I don't know.”

2012-10-04
Piers Morgan Tonight
CNN
Television, quoted in * 2012-10-05
Rick Santorum: "You can kill things and still like them"
Rachel Weiner
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/10/05/rick-santorum-you-can-kill-things-and-still-like-them/
2014-10-07
Referring to his voting to defund the public television station PBS. Big Bird is a character on Sesame Street, a prominent children's show on that network.

“What we're doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. And that's tragic.”

Fox News presidential debate,
Republican Gay rights group demands apology from Santorum
2011-09-23
Lucy
Madison
Political Hotsheet
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110698-503544.html
2012-01-16
https://archive.is/J7zWq
2013-01-02

“The bottom line is that that is legitimately Israeli country. And they have a right to do within their country just like we have a right to do within our country. If they want to negotiate with Israelis, and all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians. There is no "Palestinian."”

This is Israeli land.
Rick Santorum claims everyone who lives in the West Bank is Israeli
2011-11-22
Grace
Kiser
Reuters
http://blogs.reuters.com/political-theater/2011/11/22/rick-santorum-claims-everyone-who-lives-in-the-west-bank-is-israeli/
2012-01-19

“I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance. People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to.”

2011-12-06
Santorum: No One Has Ever Died Because They Didn’t Have Health Care
David
Badash
The New Civil Rights Movement
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/santorum-no-one-has-ever-died-because-they-didnt-have-health-care/politics/2011/12/06/31304

“You're not gonna use the pink ball. We're not gonna let you do that. Not on camera. Friends don't let friends use pink balls.”

2012-03-29
Santorum: ‘Friends don't let friends use pink balls’
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/03/29/454470/santorum-friends-dont-let-friends-use-pink-balls/
2012-04-15
to a boy using a pink bowling ball, at a campaign stop in Wisconsin

“We say to Mom that you tell us the wrong name, and we'll bring that guy in and we'll do a blood test and that's not Dad, you lose your welfare benefits. You lose your welfare benefits… Not till you tell us another name, but till we find out who Dad is, we establish it.”

New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania event, , quoted in * 2012-03-18
Rick Santorum To Single Mothers: Government Paternity Tests Or No Welfare
Jason
Cherkis
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/rick-santorum-single-mothers-unwed-moms_n_1333302.html

“Because I believe we are made the way God made man and woman and man and woman come together to have a union to produce children which keeps civilization going and provide the best environment for children to be raised. I think that is something society should value and should give privileged status over a group of people who want to have a relationship together.”

on same-sex marriage
Santorum Draws Boos From College Crowd for Opposing Gay Marriage
Julianna
Goldman
2012-01-12
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/10/bloomberg_articlesLXCV300D9L35.DTL#ixzz1jeLR1ECw
2012-01-16
http://web.archive.org/web/20120112222601/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/10/bloomberg_articlesLXCV300D9L35.DTL#ixzz1jeLR1ECw
2012-01-12

“So the gay community said, "He's comparing gay sex to incest and polygamy, how dare he do this," and they have gone out on a, I would argue, jihad against Rick Santorum since then.”

Campaign stop in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2011-08-26, quoted in * Santorum: Gay community on 'jihad' against me for stance on marriage
The Hill
2011-08-29
Justin
Sink
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/178543-santorum-gay-community-on-jihad-against-me-for-stance-on-marriage
2011-09-01

“When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches — trying to say that anybody who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles, as we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that — this is what the court said — that if believe that, if believe what's taught in Genesis, if you believe what's practiced Biblically and in generations since, then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot, and that you are a hater. Because you can't possibly think differently, you can't possibly think differently unless you are a bigot or a hater, cause there's no rational reason not to see marriage as the way the Ninth Circuit does. They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what's left is the. What's left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left, in France, became the guillotine.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're a long way from that, but if we do, and follow the path of President Obama, and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

referring to Ninth Circuit ruling unconstitutional , which banned same-sex marriage

“I don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn't matter to me. My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates.”

2012-03-20
Santorum: "I don't care" about unemployment rate
Sam
Jacobs
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-campaign-santorum-joblessbre82j0nb-20120320,0,7898443.story
2012-03-20
http://web.archive.org/web/20120322201518/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-campaign-santorum-joblessbre82j0nb-20120320,0,7898443.story
2012-03-22

“There is a limitation on debate, which is unlike other bills, for 20 hours, but there is no limitation on amendments. In other words, Republicans if they wanted to, and I suspect they do, could offer literally thousands of amendments and keep Senate in session for weeks and months.”

2010-02-27
Fox & Friends Saturday
Fox News
Television, quoted in * 2010-02-27
Santorum's health care stall tactic: "Offer literally thousands of amendments" to keep Senate in session for months
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201002270003

“I don't think God will continue to bless America if we continue to kill 1.2 million children every year.”

2012-02-21
The real trouble with Rick
John
Podhoretz
New York Post
1090-3321
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_trouble_with_rick_heWQPU8VoNAHl6Qu2ESYfO

“If there's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America, he said it about 6 weeks ago. He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and he said this was in response to the Ryan budget. And he said this, he said, talking about these three programs: He said 'America is a better country because of these programs. I will go one step further: America is a great country because of these programs.”

Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.
Rick Santorum: 'America Was a Great Country Before 1965'
Crooks and Liars
2011-06-05
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rick-santorum-america-was-great-country-19
2011-06-07
misquoting Barack Obama speech on 2011-04-13 in response to Paul Ryan's budget proposal, which would replace Medicare with a voucher program: "'There but for the grace of God go I,' we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further — we would not be a great country without those commitments."

“Ron Paul may be the wackiest candidate in the GOP field. But for pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.”

Mark Salter, aide of John McCain, Facebook, 2011-05-17, quoted in * Greg
Sargent
Happy Hour Roundup
2011-05-17
The Plum Line
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/happy-hour-roundup/2011/03/03/AF2ad25G_blog.html
2011-05-19
referring to Santorum's 2011-05-17 statement that John McCain "doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works"

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