Marco Rubio Quotes

Both my parents are first-generation success stories.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.

I came from a middle-class family. My dad was a professor; my mom was a nurse. I didn't come from money, and I didn't come from circles of power. I didn't come from the country club; I came from the town park.

I grew up on a council estate in south London; my dad was a bus driver and my mum sewed clothes to bring in extra money. My parents worked hard and were able to save up and buy a home for our family.

It doesn't matter what background you come from; it doesn't matter what your circumstances are - you can survive.

My parents' story is a great example of the American dream. Their struggles, their hard work for a better family... it inspires - that no matter how bad it might seem, you can always move past that and better yourself.

I've sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture.

My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college, and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.

I have met hundreds of young people doing just what George Romney did: using a hand up in tough times to become part of the American Dream.

I didn't finish college; my parents didn't graduate college - we didn't have a pot to piss in. I'm from Newark, New Jersey. I had to work. I didn't think it would be possible for me to be an artist without having a job.

They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn't inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better - the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.

I am who I am: an Irish Catholic kid, working class from Long Island. And I made it big.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.

I still consider myself working class. I know my circumstances have changed dramatically since I was growing up back in Birkenhead.

What I will not do is continue to perpetuate stereotypes. I'm the daughter of a maid; why do I have to also play a maid? My mom was a maid so I didn't have to be a maid.

My mom came from such humble beginnings and especially my dad as well. He didn't go to university.

The No. 1 issue in the Hispanic American community is 'How do I leave my children better off than myself?

I had to fight my whole life to break out of my circumstances. That's just part of my makeup.

My father came from a very poor background, but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn't want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had, a better shot at a better life.

A middle child, I was born in the depths of the Great Depression. My dad and mom were factory workers, struggling to make ends meet.

I might have been born in a hovel but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars.

Where else can a guy like me make it? Blind and poor---only in America.