Nikki R. Haley > Quotes

“What matters isn't the stories themselves; it's how the stories end.”
― Nikki Haley, Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story

“So, with faith in God, who knows what is right, and faith in our own ability to use the skills and judgment He gives us to do what is right, we can make this vision a reality.”
― Nikki R. Haley, Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story

“One of the issues that animated the Tea Party in South Carolina and nationally during my campaign for governor was bailouts. The debate started with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008 and signed by President Bush. The TARP bailout was a perfect example of government not understanding the value of a dollar. It was a quick fix to get everyone to calm down. But what did it actually do? The banks that received the money didn’t expand lending to businesses. They used the cash to help their own books, and the taxpayers were put on the hook as loan guarantors. No one—not the politicians who encouraged the recklessness, not the quasi-governmental entities like Fannie Mae that got rich off it, and certainly not the Wall Street firms that got bailed out—was ever held accountable. And the American people ended up worse off than they were before. As a small businessperson, I found the message government was sending incredibly offensive. In my version of capitalism, if a company succeeds, you don’t punish it by raising its taxes; and if a company fails, you don’t reward it by having the taxpayers bail it out. TARP opened the floodgates for a wave of unaccountable spending that flowed out of Washington. Soon afterward, President Obama bailed out the auto industry to rescue big labor. His allies in Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus bill, most of them without having read it. And he forced through a trillion-dollar health-care takeover. With each bailout, more and more of us felt we were getting further and further from what America was meant to be: a free and striving people with a limited and accountable government. Instead, Washington was revealing itself to be an inside game, with the rules fixed to benefit the establishment. The rules favor the well connected, while the rest of us in flyover country pay the bills.”
― Nikki R. Haley, Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story

“While others threw up their hands and asked, “What can we do?” Golda asked a different question: “What happens if we do nothing?” Doing was the only option.”
― Nikki R. Haley, If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women

“What my opponents didn’t realize was that these attacks only made me more determined. Politics can be an art of distraction. Elections can be made to be not about issues but about throwing the other candidates off. That was the game some politicos in South Carolina liked to play, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t have to play it and I wouldn’t.”
― Nikki R. Haley, Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story

“The previous day, on an Internet political talk show called Pub Politics, in which a Democrat and a Republican drink beer and talk politics, state senator Jake Knotts, a Bauer supporter, had said: “We’ve got a raghead in Washington. We don’t need a raghead in the statehouse.” Here we go again, I thought. You couldn’t make this stuff up. It was getting beyond ridiculous.”
― Nikki R. Haley, Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story

“Their goal wasn’t to stand against the men but to stand up for themselves and each other. It was about women having each other’s backs.”
― Nikki R. Haley, If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women

“There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.”
― Nikki R. Haley, If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women

“The American principles of freedom and human dignity are the source of our national greatness and our most powerful foreign-policy instruments.”
― Nikki R. Haley, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace

“As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned,” he said, “that’s his problem, not mine.”
― Nikki R. Haley, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace