Ted Cruz Quotes

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

When I was very young, I had to start to working to help my family, while my friends were studying. Since then, I have felt the urgency to escape from every dependency situation.

I saw how hard my parents worked, and I didn't want to be a freeloader.

My first vehicle I had to buy it myself and work to get it. My dad was really hard on me.

You have people like Sarah Jessica Parker - and it's also because of her mother and where she came from and all that stuff - but how you're taught to be responsible for yourself rather than endlessly people waiting for you and bringing you things.

My mom had a job, and she also took care of us, and she also took care of Dad - I always saw her pulling triple duty, doing more than I ever felt like she needed to. I made a promise to myself that it would be more of a team effort in my family someday. And because of that, I became more independent.

Mama was a country woman with a whole lot of common sense. She understood what most of our neighbors didn't - that I shouldn't grow dependent on anyone except myself. 'One of these days, I ain't gonna be here,' she kept hammering inside my head.

If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to you.

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

All three of my parents - I also had a stepmother - were teachers, and my dad taught high school, and as he always reminded me when I was going to spend some money on something, 'Your mother and I, in the Depression, had to decide whether to spend a dime on a loaf of bread or if we could go to a movie with it.'

My dad has no control over who works with me. Me, me and me alone has to take responsibility for anything.

You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.

I'm a teenager, but I'm independent - I have my own apartment, I have my own life. And I think I have learned more than any of those teenagers have in school. I learned to be responsible, leaving my family and coming here alone.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

I don't want to be a burden on anybody.

People are probably going to realize they can live with a lot less government than what they thought they needed.

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street.

If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.

It's not what your parents give you. It's what you do with your own stuff.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Dependency is death to initiative, to risk-taking and opportunity. It's time to stop the spread of government dependency and fight it like the poison it is.

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to get them to do what they would be doing if government weren't there as a perpetual parent.

You've got a lot of very, very smart people standing by waiting for somebody else to do the work. Not a recipe for long-term solvency in my opinion.