Top 280 Marco Rubio Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “I’m not poor, but I’m not rich, either.”

— Marco Rubio

2. “No matter where you’re born in life or what the circumstances are when you’re born, like your parents being poor or not connected to power, you have a chance in this country to go as far as your talent and your work will take you.”

— Marco Rubio

3. “Do not be afraid to offer ideas that draw opposition. Remember, if no one is against your idea, then your idea probably doesn’t do anything.”

— Marco Rubio

4. “America is still the land of opportunity for most, but it is not a land of opportunity for all. If we are to remain an exceptional nation, we must close this gap in opportunity.”

— Marco Rubio

5. “Hope and Change has become Divide and Conquer.”

— Marco Rubio

6. “Our higher education system is controlled by what amounts to a cartel of existing colleges and universities, which use their power over the accreditation process to block innovative, low-cost competitors from entering the market.”

— Marco Rubio

7. “The most important institution in society is the family. If the family breaks down, society breaks down.”

— Marco Rubio

8. “Humans are not responsible for climate change in the way some of people are trying to make us believe, for the following reason: I believe the climate is changing because there’s never been a moment where the climate is not changing.”

— Marco Rubio

9. “Americans chose a limited government that exists to protect our rights, not to grant them.”

— Marco Rubio

10. “70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.”

— Marco Rubio

11. “The way to turn our economy around is not by making rich people poorer, it’s by making poor people richer.”

— Marco Rubio

12. “Florida is not going to vote for a con artist like Donald Trump.”

— Marco Rubio

13. “Despite our differences, I know that both Republicans and Democrats love America.”

— Marco Rubio

14. “Nothing matters if we aren’t safe.”

— Marco Rubio

15. “I’m not running for Vice President, I’m not looking to be anyone’s vice president, I want to be the president...”

— Marco Rubio

16. “If you raise the minimum wage, you’re going to make people more expensive than a machine.”

— Marco Rubio

17. “We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.”

— Marco Rubio

18. “Our national motto is ‘In God we Trust,’ reminding us that faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all.”

— Marco Rubio

19. “You can’t have a strong nation without strong values, and no one is born with strong values. They have to be taught to you in strong families and reinforced in you in strong communities.”

— Marco Rubio

20. “America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law.”

— Marco Rubio

21. “You cannot give up on the American dream. We cannot allow our fears and our disappointments to lead us into silence and into inaction.”

— Marco Rubio

22. “This is the only country in the world where today’s employee, is tomorrow’s employer.”

— Marco Rubio

23. “If my house was on fire, I can’t compromise about which part of the house I’m going to save. You save the whole house or it will all burn down. We either save this country or we do not.”

— Marco Rubio

24. “Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.”

— Marco Rubio

25. “I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that’s not a solution is a waste of time.”

— Marco Rubio

26. “Leadership can not be measured in a poll or even in the result of an election. It can only be truly seen with the benefit of time. From the perspective of 20 years, not 20 days.”

— Marco Rubio

27. “Americans believe in the value of immigration. We are the most generous nation on earth to immigrants, allowing over one million people a year to come here legally.”

— Marco Rubio

28. “I have been an underdog my whole life, both in life and in politics. We’re going to do well. We’re going to pick up a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday.”

— Marco Rubio

29. “Donald Trump is not a Republican. Donald Trump is not a conservative. Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history, basically a con job, where he’s trying to take over the Republican Party by telling people he’s someone who he is not.”

— Marco Rubio

30. “The only people benefiting from the status quo in immigration in the USA are the people trafficking human beings across the border, and the people who are hiring illegal labor for cheap purposes.”

— Marco Rubio

31. “We don’t need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system. And then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again.”

— Marco Rubio

32. “Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.”

— Marco Rubio

33. “The truth is every problem can’t be solved by government. Many are caused by the moral breakdown in our society. And the answers to those challenges lie primarily in our families and our faiths, not our politicians.”

— Marco Rubio

34. “You know that big government doesn’t hurt big corporations. They’ve got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It’s the little guys.”

— Marco Rubio

35. “We focus so much on how immigrants can change America that we forget that America has always changed immigrants even more.”

— Marco Rubio

36. “People have a right to be a Democrat. People have a right to be wrong. I know they’re the same thing.”

— Marco Rubio

37. “We’re special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here. That’s not just my story. That’s your story. That’s our story.”

— Marco Rubio

38. “Our brave men and women have made many sacrifices in just wars to defeat the forces of evil. We have exported our greatest values: freedom and opportunity, which have lifted millions out of poverty. At home, these values allow Americans to use their God-given potential and make their dreams reality.”

— Marco Rubio

39. “Foreign aid is important. If it’s done right, it spreads America’s influence around the world in a positive way.”

— Marco Rubio

40. “A sense that with the blessings that God bestowed upon this land, came the responsibility to make the world a better place.”

— Marco Rubio

41. “Let’s stop talking about new taxes and start talking about creating new taxpayers, which basically means jobs.”

— Marco Rubio

42. “Americans believe with all their heart, the vast majority of them, and the vast majority of Floridians, that the United States of America is simply the single greatest nation in all of human history.”

— Marco Rubio

43. “Conservatives aren’t anti-immigrant – conservatives are pro-legal immigration.”

— Marco Rubio

44. “How is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck.”

— Marco Rubio

45. “Any time you can degrade or take away the top leadership of an organization, it’s a positive step forward.”

— Marco Rubio

46. “Ultimately, my proposal isn’t intended to increase or decrease the amount of federal spending spent on antipoverty programs.”

— Marco Rubio

47. “No economic system is perfect. But the American Free Enterprise system has empowered millions of people in the past. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes.”

— Marco Rubio

48. “I am privileged to be a citizen of the single greatest society in all of human history.”

— Marco Rubio

49. “We have a government that borrows $4 billion a day. We have a government that owes trillions of dollars in debt, half of that to foreigners, most of that to Chinese investors. I don’t – that is extreme. Not only is it extreme. It’s insane and it’s unsustainable.”

— Marco Rubio

50. “We need American foreign policy that tells the world very clearly that it is bad to be our enemy and good to be our friend.”

— Marco Rubio