Jesse Ventura Quotes

Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people's tuition for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me.

Our government has the weirdest bias against cannabis. There's no reason for everybody to be so afraid of it. It's not the antichrist the DEA makes it out to be. Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful. And government has no business telling us what we can and can't use for pain relief.

"I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions?"

Some felt I'm not academically qualified, and they're right.

I was stunned to learn that there are CIA operatives inside some state governments. They are not in executive positions—in other words, not appointed by the governor—but are permanent state employees. Governors come and go, but they keep working—in legitimate jobs, but with dual identities. In Minnesota, this person was at a deputy commissioner level, fairly high up. [...] Are they put there to spy? To see the direction that state government is going, what's happening, and report back—to whom? And for what purpose? Do they think there are traitors in certain states? I don't know. That part, I wasn't told. I'm left to wonder why our Constitution is being violated.

Now whether or not someone can participate in debates is based upon an arbitrary polling figure. You have to be polling nationally at 15 percent. If that criteria had been applied in Minnesota, I would not have become the governor. Because at the time of the primary, I was only polling at 10 percent. But I was allowed to debate, and I proved that you could be at 10 percent and still end up winning. And I did it in a mere eight weeks.

George Bush keeps saying that terrorists keep attacking us because we have freedom here in America. So what, the solution is to take away our freedoms and they won't attack us?

I thought to myself, "This is Harvard", You expect Harvard to be this stuffy, arrogant place. But then you get here and see how bright everyone is — what could be better? I loved it.

Government's role should be only to keep the playing field level, and to work hand in hand with business on issues such as employment. But beyond this, to as great an extent as possible, it should get the hell out of the way.

I've often referred to pro wrestling as "ballet with violence." Yes, it's staged, as far as who's going to be the winner, but it's not fake. It's really an art form, and one that requires careful discipline. When you smash your opponent with a folding chair, you've got to know how not to hurt him. When you get body-slammed, it's painful, no way around it. But you get used to it.

I asked him the most important question that I think you could ask — if he had ever seen Caddyshack.

If I could be reincarnated as a fabric, I would come back as a 38 double-D bra.

I looked at my wife and said, "You know what? If these people put their own dollar-an-hour raise above the integrity of our nation, I don't wanna be their boss anymore."

I'm not knocking private schools, but I owe it to my kids to let them grow up in a place where private school isn't required. They're only in school 6-8 hours a day; they have to live in their neighborhood 24 hours a day. I didn't want them growing up in a place where anybody with the means had abandoned their public schools.

There's hardly a more effective way to solve the problems we face in our educational system than to reduce class size. A ratio of no more than 17 students per teacher ensures more 1-on-1 contact, better classroom discipline, you name it.