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• Change will not come from above, it will come from below, from the small and medium size businesspeople..

• I am the guardian of power, not its owner.

• Mexico doesn't deserve what has happened to us. A democratic change is urgent, a change that will permit us to stop being a loser country.
  • While campaigning for President

• There's no doubt that Mexican men and women full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States.
  • In a meeting with Texas businessmen, in what he claims was a misunderstood defense of Mexican illegal workers in the US.

• We are a nation in which freedom is alive in the squares and streets, in the daily work of the communications media, in the open relationship between the governing and the governed.

• To be united, to be friendly, pays and pays well

• I have the boots well placed in the ground, and I see reality up front, never giving it my back
  • Speech at swearing-in ceremony

• Comes y te vas.
  • Translation: You eat, and then you leave.
  • Said to Fidel Castro, when inviting him to the Summit of Monterrey

• I hope one day the Holy Ghost lights our way so we can approve IRS and budget Reforms
  • Said two days before the elections, about the challenges for his successor.

• We Mexicans believe in the force of the law, not in the law of force
  • Said during his Sixth State of the Union, while the opposition used force to block congress and prevent him from speaking at the palace.

• Gracias mi rey
  • Translation: Thank you, my king
  • Fox's reply when King Juan Carlos I of Spain called to congratulate him after winning the elections on July 2000

• I did a lot of mischief while I was a little boy, and I continue to do it now that I am President
  • To children on Children's Day, in April 2001

• ¿Y yo por qué?
  • Translation: Why me?
  • When asked his opinion about a legal conflict between two Mexican TV networks

• Se sienten ñañaras.
  • Translation: It feels like butterflies in the stomach
  • When asked by an 11-year-old girl how he felt about being President

• PEMEX is like the Virgin of Guadalupe, they are symbols for Mexicans that must be handled with care
  • Explaining, during his campaign in March 2000, why he wouldn't privatize PEMEX.

• He has a good foot for kicking, but he doesn't have a good brain for talking

• First class, or like the youth would say, very cool
  • On his opinion of the actions of the military in Chiapas

• Jose Luis Borgues
  • Trying to refer to Jorge Luis Borges

• Jesus Christ himself lost one of his twelve apostles, here we lost one too and I'm sorry
  • Trying to downplay the resignation of one of his cabinet members

• Tenemos que eliminar el tabasquismo.
• Translation: We have to eliminate 'Tabasquism'
  • This play on words was a mistake by President Fox during non-smoking day, in which the President was trying to say that Mexico had to eliminate tabaquismo. Tabasco is the home state of political opponents Roberto Madrazo and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and so the quote has been interpreted as an attack against them.