Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.

We also cannot allow Wall Street banks to rewrite the Second Amendment just because they’re too big to fail.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

Now, anybody who thinks that we can move this economy forward with just a few folks at the top doing well, hoping that it’s going to trickle down to working people who are running faster and faster just to keep up, you’ll never see it.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That’s a statement in and of itself.

The Latin American debt that reached crisis levels from 1982 would have been sharply reduced by return of flight capital – in some cases, overcome, though all figures are dubious for these secret and often illegal operations.

When you’re young, you’re very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

When I was born, the economy wasn’t in a great state; it was the Depression, and my father had to be quick to try and find work.

We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn’t do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.

I bet taxpayers remember providing more than $812 billion to Citigroup and Bank of America, two Wall Street banks, in 2009 to bail them out during the 2008 financial crisis. Taxpayers remember that generosity; big banks evidently don’t.

Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the – he said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street. They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.

Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not an either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

Pricey oil makes clear that wealth really is energy in various forms.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

No one saw the recession coming.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

We Conservatives hate unemployment.

Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

Deflation isn’t good, and inflation is easier to cure than deflation.

Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

The dollar has lost over 90 percent of its value since the Fed was created.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’m concerned about the recklessness of public policy that endangers people’s lives, especially in minority communities, where crime often is such a scourge.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That’s because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‚Look, here’s what happened.‘

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Wall Street apparently takes and then forgets, and then comes after the guns of law-abiding American citizens and small businesses.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

The problem is that the U.S. government is the biggest debtor in the world, and those depending on it to take care of them will only become poorer.

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we’re getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best: We’re making things again.

I know the Federal Reserve Bank can continue to print more and more money… but city and state governments cannot.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The state of the economy is not the issue when it comes to growing a business. The relevant questions are always: ‚What business are you in? Furthermore, is it adapting to the times?‘

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine’s economy.

When America stopped importing from China, China stopped importing from the rest of the world. This affects Asian countries as well as Australia, Brazil, and other suppliers of raw materials.

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.