Dave Brat

“I'm not against business. I'm against big business in bed with big government.”

“The political Right likes to champion individual rights and individual liberty, but it has also worked to enforce morality in relation to abortion, gambling, and homosexuality.”

“The only problem with Republican principles is no one's following them.”

“The issue is the Republican Party has been paying too much attention to Wall Street and not enough attention to Main Street.”

“I'm not anti-Wall Street - I'm anti-distortions to free markets.”

“I have an ethics background. It doesn't mean you're perfect. But I tried to set an entirely different bar for politics in D.C. that's based on ethics and first principles and political philosophy, and not this constant bickering of, 'Are you Right or Left?'”

“Everyone's for free markets except when it affects your own business.”

“All too frequently, the knee jerk reaction to tragedies by the media and chattering class is to move to restrict our rights... Our founding documents make it clear that our inalienable rights come from God and that the job of the government is to ensure and protect those God-given rights.”

“The state can be a force for good. The Rule of law is absolutely essential to a good life. God has instituted government and leaders throughout history and throughout the Biblical narrative. However, the state is growing precisely as the church is fading as a force for good, and this does not seem to be a good trend.”

“I want to be Eric Cantor's term limit.”

“Religion has for too long been placed on the back burner of history, when it may be one of the driving forces in history.”

“My hero Socrates trained Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money.”

“If you take your kid in for the sniffles, you pay $20, but the full cost is $200. And so we need to get back to the price system where you see the full cost of health care, and then people will make smarter decisions. That will reduce health care costs, and it's a huge part of our economy.”

“In terms of personalities - I don't care about the personalities, I want leadership that's in favor of my principles: free markets, adherence to the Constitution, and equal treatment for everyone under the law.”

“We want everybody to get rich. The Republican Party is often called unloving, uncaring, not generous, or whatever - that's a bunch of baloney. We're the party that believes in free markets.”

“I am running to fix the economy, restore the constitutional system of checks and balances and to end this game of crony capitalism by the ruling class in Washington.”

“Fannie and Freddie made two-thirds of all subprime mortgages. That is not a free market institution. That entity, along with the Fed printing too much money back in '03 and '04, caused the housing collapse. So we need to take free markets seriously. That means we have to put an end to all these tax credits and tax deductions and loopholes.”

“The problem with modern politics is everybody is doing sound bite stuff. In my stump speech, I give 20 minutes on why I think we're off track. And I think people do really want to engage in a serious high-level discussion on how to get the country back on track because people care about their own country.”

“If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you've got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries.”

“China and India are feeding their people for the first time in human history due to free markets, and the Left knows that, and it gets them nervous.”