Top 120 Rick Santorum Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If everyone is exceptional, nobody is exceptional.”

— Rick Santorum

2. “Prayer and hard work are a pretty good one-two punch to get things done.”

— Rick Santorum

3. “Stand up for your principles, but be a decent human being while you’re doing it.”

— Rick Santorum

4. “The family is the first economy. If the family breaks down, well, government gets bigger because of the consequences of family breakdown. We see in the neighborhoods where there are no marriages and there are no two-parent families.”

— Rick Santorum

5. “I don’t want to go to a trade war, I want to beat China. I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business.”

— Rick Santorum

6. “CO2 is a pollutant? Tell that to the plants.”

— Rick Santorum

7. “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It’s being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the eye to come back to the United States.”

— Rick Santorum

8. “The more money you take away from families is the less power that family has. And that’s a basic power.”

— Rick Santorum

9. “It’s the most ambitious power grab I’ve ever witnessed.”

— Rick Santorum

10. “The most dangerous place for an African-American in this country is in the womb.”

— Rick Santorum

11. “We are seeing it. We are seeing the fabric of this country fall apart, and it’s falling apart because of single moms.”

— Rick Santorum

12. “I support the death penalty and will continue to do that.”

— Rick Santorum

13. “If the Constitution says that marriage is between a man and woman, then things that are inconsistent with that would be inconsistent with the Constitution.”

— Rick Santorum

14. “This is common sense. This is nature, and what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society.”

— Rick Santorum

15. “A lesbian woman came up to me and said, ‘why are you denying me my right?’ I said, ‘well, because it’s not a right.’ It’s a privilege that society recognizes because society sees intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.”

— Rick Santorum

16. “NASCAR and the Daytona 500 are about as American as you can get.”

— Rick Santorum

17. “You can’t ignore the reality that faith and family, those two things are integral parts of having limited government, lower taxes, and free societies.”

— Rick Santorum

18. “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

— Rick Santorum

19. “Big Business wants cheap labor costs.”

— Rick Santorum

20. “The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”

— Rick Santorum

21. “I thank God that America still has one party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children – born and unborn, and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.”

— Rick Santorum

22. “I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations.”

— Rick Santorum

23. “And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what’s at stake. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country. What I’m asking all of you tonight is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker.”

— Rick Santorum

24. “America’s honor, your honor is at stake. Go out and preserve the greatest country in the history of the world.”

— Rick Santorum

25. “Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them.”

— Rick Santorum

26. “The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong.”

— Rick Santorum

27. “Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?”

— Rick Santorum

28. “This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?”

— Rick Santorum

29. “Donald Trump is a good businessman. He knows how to put the deal together. And I think he’d be a – he’ll be a very constructive figure in the White House.”

— Rick Santorum

30. “Now is the time to act or get stuck with a bland, boring career politician who will lose to Barack Obama.”

— Rick Santorum

31. “When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on anything? They cannot have the final say on anything. The American people have the final say on anything.”

— Rick Santorum

32. “All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.”

— Rick Santorum

33. “You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”

— Rick Santorum

34. “We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices. The bubble burst in housing because people couldn’t pay their mortgages because of $4 a gallon gasoline.”

— Rick Santorum

35. “I have lots of favorites movies. I say this only because it’s a favorite movie because it’s a sport I love. I’m a huge baseball fan. There are movies I like as much as this, but I sort of single this movie out because I’m a baseball nut, and that’s ‘Field of Dreams.’”

— Rick Santorum

36. “Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance – before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans – helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions.”

— Rick Santorum

37. “Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, whether it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.”

— Rick Santorum

38. “I do care about not 99 percent or 95 percent. I care about the very rich and the very poor. I care about 100 percent of America.”

— Rick Santorum

39. “I want to make sure that the American worker has an opportunity to see their wages rise and their incomes increase.”

— Rick Santorum

40. “Ron Paul may be the wackiest candidate in the GOP field. But for pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.”

— Rick Santorum

41. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

— Rick Santorum

42. “Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

— Rick Santorum

43. “I think the Supreme Court has, as an equal branch of government, the ability to overrule Congress and the president. But I also feel it’s the role of the Congress and the president to push back. I mean I think it’s important that they are understood as equal branches of government.”

— Rick Santorum

44. “There are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire.”

— Rick Santorum

45. “Saddam Hussein was not an Islamist. He’s not a radical jihadist. He’s not a radical Muslim. I mean, he was a – he was a Baathist. He was a secular – even though he professed to be a good and devout Muslim.”

— Rick Santorum

46. “I think that could be a very compromising situation where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.”

— Rick Santorum

47. “It’s very interesting, if you look at a study that was done by the Brookings Institute back in 2009, they determined that if Americans do three things, they can avoid poverty. Three things. Work, graduate from high school, and get married before you have children.”

— Rick Santorum

48. “I looked at No Child Left Behind after it was enacted and saw what happened and saw the expansion of the federal government and the role of education. And I said, you know, that was – that’s not what I believe in.”

— Rick Santorum

49. “Marriage is an institution that existed before governments existed. It’s something that reflects nature and reflects God and God’s will for us. And both from the standpoint of faith and reason it makes all the sense in the world. And it’s beneficial for society.”

— Rick Santorum

50. “Well, higher-income people don’t have to pay taxes if they don’t want to because they can move their money somewhere else, they can move their investments. They can stop investing. They can stop working. They don’t need to work. They’re higher-income people.”

— Rick Santorum