Marco Rubio Quotes

As Secretary of Defense I have to be cautious and prudent.

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

The National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.

I served on the Armed Services Committee for 18 years and we must lead, or the job won't get done, unfortunately, for our country.

President Bush has a track record of making the right decisions when it comes to national security.

Well, we've faced very difficult decisions and challenges in our country, every one of us have, as we - since September 11th, as we fought the war on terror, all of those decisions that the President had to make to put young men and women in harm's way.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

Let no one expect us to disarm unilaterally. We are not a naive people.

A leader should not get too far in front of his troops or he will be shot in the ass.

A leader who does not hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Armchair generals assume that nations decide on their foreign policy objectives and then subordinate everything else to achieving them. Life is more complicated. Threats, opportunities and risks are always uncertain, but the economic costs of maximum preparedness are definite.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

When the President is a moralist, he needs a process that will make up for the natural shortcomings of such a style—an inattention to second-step thinking, an allergy to detail, a tendency not to see the point of having dissenters, a habit of allowing certainty to override considerations of risk. It is the National Security Advisor’s responsibility to fill a President’s strategic gaps, not to exacerbate them.

The pressure of time, is the overwhelming challenge for policymakers who must act on assessments that cannot be proved at the time and whose mistakes are irretrievable.

I want what's best for our country. I'm not sure I can figure that out.

I think, you know, a fellow CEO said to me that the interesting thing about being CEO that's really striking is that you have very few decisions that you need to make, and you need to make them absolutely perfectly.

During a time of war, we ask our troops to give their best even to the point of sacrificing their own lives. When compared against that, how much of a sacrifice is it for a president to engage in a possibly contentious debate with Congress about whether military action is a good idea?

Throughout his remarkable business and government career, Robert Rubin, now 65, has both worked exhaustively at reaching well-founded conclusions and rejected the idea that anything - and he means anything - can be a 'provable certainty.'

Being the leader means you have to make life or death decisions sometimes.

War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.

I can only say this, a very, very important element of any country, but our country, and in my opinion, the single most important thing that a president can do is the defense of our country.

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.

Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense the nation has ever had.

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.

I think one of the reasons I'm standing here instead of other people is that, frankly, I talked about it, we have to have a strong military.