Welcome to a compilation of insightful and thought-provoking quotes by Newt Gingrich, a prominent American politician, historian, and author. With a career spanning decades in public service and academia, Gingrich has left an indelible mark on American politics, shaping conservative thought and policy discourse. Known for his eloquence and strategic acumen, Gingrich’s quotes offer unique perspectives on a wide array of topics, ranging from governance and leadership to history and society.
As a former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and a key figure in the Republican Party, Gingrich’s words carry weight and relevance in today’s political landscape. Whether advocating for conservative principles, outlining strategies for effective governance, or offering insights into the complexities of modern-day challenges, Gingrich’s quotes resonate with those seeking understanding and inspiration. Below, you’ll find a curated selection of his most notable quotes, ripe for sharing, reflection, or artistic reinterpretation. Explore these words of wisdom and let them spark new ideas and conversations.
America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Newt Gingrich
I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. Newt Gingrich
Frankly, Governor Romney in his career has created more jobs than the entire Obama cabinet combined, so he could actually talk about it. Newt Gingrich
The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial and far too powerful. Newt Gingrich
I believe we will elect a new President in 2012. Newt Gingrich
You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate. Newt Gingrich
I believe we are now in a struggle over whether or not we are going to save America. Newt Gingrich
Think about it. If it’s taking pictures, it’s not a cellphone. If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location, that’s not a cellphone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google, that’s not a cellphone. Newt Gingrich
You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there’s nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine, or you can be in the tradition that says, ‘These kind of addictive drugs are terrible; they deprive you of full citizenship, and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.’ Newt Gingrich
Part of why the Tea Party so deeply threatened the elite media is the tea party looked around and suddenly realized, there are more of us than there are of them. Newt Gingrich
What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If voters care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots. Newt Gingrich
Now, I know among the politically correct, you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable. Newt Gingrich
Whether you’re talking about Chris Christie, or you’re talking about Rick Perry or Scott Walker or John Kasich, there’s more interesting evolution at the state level than there is in Washington. Newt Gingrich
President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history. Newt Gingrich
I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics. Newt Gingrich
And by the way I don’t object if people want to attack me, that’s their right. All I’m suggesting that it’s not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking. Newt Gingrich
I clearly have done things that were wrong. I’ve clearly had to seek God’s forgiveness. Newt Gingrich
You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work. What if you paid them in the afternoon to work in the clerical office or as the assistant librarian? Newt Gingrich
So I’d be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I’d let him use a teleprompter. I’ll just rely on knowledge. We’ll do fine. Newt Gingrich
Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ Wouldn’t they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. Newt Gingrich
If you take all the money we’ve spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles. Newt Gingrich
Trump has got to, I think, move to a new level. This is no longer the primaries. He’s no longer an interesting contender. He is now the potential leader of the United States and he’s got to move his game up to the level of being a potential leader. Newt Gingrich
My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I’m going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results. Newt Gingrich
If the Soviet empire still existed, I’d be terrified. The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now. Newt Gingrich
While abolishing judgeships and lower federal courts is a blunt tool and one whose use is warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances… it is one of many possibilities to check and balance the judiciary. Newt Gingrich
My style is to stay on the offensive: to take risks, to recover very fast when you make a mistake, but to keep moving forward. Newt Gingrich
People have to render judgment. In my case, I’ve said upfront openly, I’ve made mistakes at times. I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness. I’ve had to seek reconciliation. But I’m also a 68-year-old grandfather, and I think people have to measure who I am now and whether I’m a person they can trust. Newt Gingrich
I think to close half of Magic Kingdom for the purpose of a White House invitation town hall meeting on a phony main street on behalf of a phony president just strikes me as weird. Newt Gingrich
I’m not a natural leader. I’m too intellectual; I’m too abstract; I think too much. Newt Gingrich
The genius of guys like Lincoln and Reagan and FDR – the great communicator leaders – is that they’re actually educators, so they understand when they use a phrase that they have to explain it, because, by definition, you won’t understand it or they wouldn’t need to be using it. Newt Gingrich
If Trump keeps learning, he could become a big asset. He will shatter the traditional patterns. Newt Gingrich
Congress was designed by the Founding Fathers to move slowly, precisely to avoid the sudden panic of a one-week solution that becomes a 20-year mess. Newt Gingrich
The one period of glory in NASA was the first nine years when they weren’t a bureaucracy yet… and they haven’t gotten back to that excitement, that adventurism, and won’t. So, I would take most of the NASA budget, and I would turn it into prizes for private sector. Newt Gingrich
A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about. Newt Gingrich
It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending. Newt Gingrich
If a liberal were to attack Justice Clarence Thomas on the grounds that he’s black, we would all go crazy. Newt Gingrich
We need a visionary leader with very big and bold ideas. This is a very big, very bold country. Newt Gingrich
This is about systemic, institutional corruption, not personality. To ask the Democratic leadership to clean things up would be like asking the old Soviet bureaucracy under Brezhnev to reform itself. It ain’t going to happen. Newt Gingrich
It’s been one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through in my whole life: trying to understand the degree to which behaviors that I thought were totally appropriate were destructive. Newt Gingrich
This is a candidate who never even thought about policy. What Trump represents is pure willpower and the notion of breaking through the system. Newt Gingrich
I discourage a cult of personality. Newt Gingrich
You can never study Franklin Delano Roosevelt too much. Newt Gingrich
I would replace most foreign aid with a tax credit for businesses to invest. I think U.S. bureaucrats giving foreign bureaucrats money is a guaranteed failure. And we’ve had about 50 years’ experience at failing with foreign aid. Newt Gingrich
I joined a Republican Party that was used to losing, used to being browbeaten by the Democrats. I represent a totally different style. Newt Gingrich
What makes me unusually intense is that I personalize the pain of war, the pain of children being killed, the pain of a 16-year-old who has been permanently cheated by his school and cannot read. Newt Gingrich
If you get involved in a controversy, then that becomes the mesmerizing event that people remember you by. Newt Gingrich
The thing that shocks people… is that I mean what I say. I don’t use hyperbole. Newt Gingrich
If you’re not in ‘The Washington Post’ every day, you might as well not exist. Newt Gingrich
I think conservatives can be for very tough-minded trade. Newt Gingrich
The government shut down 12 times under Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. It was only shut down twice while I was speaker. Newt Gingrich
I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to. Newt Gingrich
I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. Newt Gingrich
I will focus on being substantive and I will focus on Barack Obama. Newt Gingrich
Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they’re cultural? Newt Gingrich
I will continue to find ways to help poor people find a job, get a job, and learn someday to own the job. Newt Gingrich
Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union. Newt Gingrich
I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people’s religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought to all oppose burning the Koran. Newt Gingrich
We have to be as militant defending America as the enemies of America are in trying to destroy America. Newt Gingrich
President Obama has created at least three jobs that I know of – Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown. Newt Gingrich
All unemployment compensation should be tied to a job training requirement. Now the fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree. Newt Gingrich
The secular elites are so terrified of telling the truth about radical Islam. When you talk about the radical Islamists, we have got to get straight and get serious and talk about it in the right way. Newt Gingrich
I don’t know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor. Newt Gingrich
By definition, the person who learns enough to become the nominee is almost certainly the best person for the general election. Newt Gingrich
I think my health is probably fine. Let’s be honest, you never know what could happen to somebody, but I think I’m in very good shape right now. Newt Gingrich
You’ve got the North Koreans building weapons; you got the Iranians building weapons. You’ve got – the Pakistanis already have at least 100 nuclear weapons. Do you think there’s any serious effort in this country to come to grips with that? Newt Gingrich
I’m a controversial guy. Newt Gingrich
The bigotry question goes both ways. There’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. None of it gets covered by the news media. Newt Gingrich
Surely the President can agree with us, that theft from government is not good. I know it’s bold. It’s out on the edge. I know from a Chicago-Springfield background it’s hard to fully grasp that honesty could be part of government. Newt Gingrich
If you’re not brave, you’re not going to be free. Newt Gingrich
We tried to have diplomas without learning, we tried to have jobs without work, we tried to have houses without savings, we tried to have government without responsibility. Newt Gingrich
In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins. Newt Gingrich
There I was on the front page of the ‘London Times’ as speaker of the House with an animal on top of my head. I liked it, but it was not what my staff thought was appropriately dignified. Newt Gingrich
We’re at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism. Newt Gingrich
In very rare circumstances, the executive branch might choose to ignore a court decision. Newt Gingrich
I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee. Newt Gingrich
The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over. Newt Gingrich
Frankly, I would not have made any difference in Vietnam, but much more is what difference it would have made in me. Newt Gingrich
An energy tax punishes senior citizens, it punishes rural Americans, if you use electricity it punishes you. This bill will increase your cost of living and may kill your job. Newt Gingrich
The most important social welfare program in America is a job. Newt Gingrich
Is the purpose of free elections to allow the most clever and vicious person to aggregate power, or is the purpose of free elections to enable the American people to have a serious conversation about their country’s future and try to find both a policy and a personality that they think will carry to them that better future? Newt Gingrich
More than just a zoo, the Animal Kingdom is an extraordinary experience of animals, rides and performances. The exhibits have the scale and creativity you associate with Disney. The African safari ride is terrific and worth riding several times. Newt Gingrich
I got active in this business of politics and self-government in 1958 when my father, who was serving in the U.S. Army, took us to the battlefield of Verdun. Newt Gingrich
The U.S. cannot be the policeman of the world. When we tried that in Vietnam, they beat us up. Newt Gingrich
Nixon had this remarkably effective, deeply intense will to power. Reagan and I have a will to ideas. Newt Gingrich
I am for deporting all recent unattached illegals. I am for a local citizen panel to consider certification of those who have been here 25 years and have family and community and have been law-abiding and tax-paying. Newt Gingrich
Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington. Newt Gingrich
If we are all endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness, that has to apply to the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest counties, and I am prepared to find something that works, that breaks us out of the cycles we have now to find a way for poor children to work and earn honest money. Newt Gingrich
The Central Park Zoo is a little gem in the middle of the city. Its penguin exhibit is terrific, and the seals are a permanent center of attraction for children. Newt Gingrich
Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for ‘religious toleration’ are arrogantly dishonest. Newt Gingrich
Both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance. Newt Gingrich
Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians. Newt Gingrich
Until someone is prepared to lay out the systemic problem, we will simply go through cycles of finding corruption, finding a scapegoat, eliminating the scapegoat, and relaxing until we find the next scandal. Newt Gingrich
I was once, I think, bitten on the nose by a lion cub. Newt Gingrich
The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis. Newt Gingrich
Cincinnati has one of the most diverse animal collections in the world, with more than 500 species represented. They also have a really good insect exhibit. Newt Gingrich
Only the elites despise earning money. Newt Gingrich
I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply-side economics. Newt Gingrich
I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century. Newt Gingrich
I can tell you I can work on four or five hours of sleep a night and cat nap all day, and I can go for 8 or 10 days on the road, and it doesn’t seem to affect me. Newt Gingrich
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. Newt Gingrich