Rick Santelli Quotes

Sometimes people credit me for the Tea Party. It's actually the other way around.

The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?

I do think the Tea Party position will prevail, and I am often asked: 'What has the Tea Party done and is it even still alive?' People think because there have been no demonstrations with the 'Don't Tread on Me' flag it's gone, but it hasn't.

My political views have since I was a kid someway or another reflected the concerns of Tea Party movement.

In many respects, I guess I would say I was into Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.

Well you know I'm very supportive of what the Tea Party is trying to do. They're very concerned with spending, the deficit, the bailouts, you know all of those kinds of things. But I really think that the strength of the Tea Party is being a grassroots movement.

People ask me if I'm the father of the Tea Party movement... I was the spark... that started it.

I think that the tea party, grassroots ideology will win every time.

The most misreported and misunderstood thing about the tea party is its political leanings. The tea party has no political leaning. It stands straight for limited government, low taxes, and liberty for all.

So, a lot of my supporters back home are members of the Tea Party.

Well, look, I'm as Tea Party as it gets.

I was Tea Party years before there was an official Tea Party.

There are Tea Parties, and I would say plural, in California.

I call it small government, grass-roots activism: The Tea Party activists are a part of it, FreedomWorks is part of it. FreedomWorks is the longest-standing, most active organization within this movement.

If not for the Tea Party, the Republican Party would not be coming back to its roots.

The Tea Party claims to want small government.

Make no mistake about it. These are not 'kookie' birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement.

You know I have had Tea Party support.

I think the Tea Party movement is great. I think anybody who has been frustrated over the last few years with the Republicans and Democrats, when they were trying to grow government and have spending and we weren't focusing on creating jobs and get our private sector growing again, I think that's when people started to wake up.

I have a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We've come to take our government back.

Today, grass-roots Republicans want to drink a bottle of 2010 small-government wine, but our candidates were bottled in another era, before the tea party's ideas took root.

I think people are confused about what the Tea Party is. I mean, they were a broad cross-section of Americans who came together concerned about our debt and our spending. And they're interested in constitutional, limited government. And so they're not one group of people. They're thousands of small groups all over the country.

I think that, you know, when we start talking about the Tea Party, people want to marginalize that into some kind of organization or party, but it really isn't.

The Tea Party emerged from a laudably grassroots base: libertarians, fervent Constitutionalists, and ordinary people alarmed at the suppression of liberties, whether by George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Man Up and use your political capital to support the Tea Party Candidates!... If the GOP strays from the Tea Party message, the GOP is through.