John F. Kerry Quotes

I'm motivated by my passion for our basic values, protecting our interests, and for protecting the future.

I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important.

I'm going to be honest with you - I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system. Is it a government-run system?

My dad was a member of the Greatest Generation that achieved victory in World War II. This was the generation that saved the world from fascism, came home and built the great American middle class, led the way in the civil rights movement, protected our environment, and created great programs like Medicare.

I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.

For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans.

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

I am not a spokesperson for the church and the church is not a spokesperson for the United States of America.

American soldiers [are] going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the ñ of ñ the historical customs, religious customs.

The oceans themselves are threatened and life itself, therefore, and the planet is threatened because of it.

We will not be derailed by criminal anarchists who legitimately claim a religious cause.

A fundamental premise of politics is we can make this work if people just never figure it out.

I heard Katty Kay's name and I know Katty Kay said we didn't have a plan. Well, there is a plan, and the President [Barack Obama] is moving forward with any number of options and ways to augment our efforts on ISIL.

If the tea party folks would go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God's sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry about the fact that they're being killed and our planet's being injured by what's happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices that we have. That's something worth getting angry about.

I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.

Values spoken without actions taken are merely slogans.

Think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-all challenges that know no borders-the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them.

We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.

Values are not just words, values are what we live by. They're about the causes that we champion and the people we fight for.

If the threat is jihadism - and it is - and the threat is the destruction of Syria so that all of these refugees are swamping into Europe and changing the whole character and politics of Europe, this is the time to unite to find a way out.

I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an Atheist. We have separation of church and state in the United States of America.

I have a plan to protect the environment so that we leave this place in better shape to our children than we were handed it by our parents.

What is happening is policy in Israel is being driven by the settlers who don't support a two-state solution, who want their settlements to prevent the possibility of two states. They openly say that.

It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism. If so, the only exit strategy is victory, this is our common mission and the world's cause.

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.

We owe our troops the opportunity to serve in the best-planned, best-equipped, and best-led military force in the world, and we owe them the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they and their families will be taken care of if they sacrifice life, limb or the ability to sleep without war's nightmares. We owe them not just thanks and best wishes, but action, and action in our nation's capital.

What Donald Trump is doing is serving the polluters and serving a narrow group of ideological interests. That's not leadership. That's abdication of responsibility, and this step does not make America first. It makes America last.

I promise just to serve two terms. Republicans do it differently. They just have the son repeat the father's whole first term.

I think, all in all, the Obama administration and what President Obama has focused on has lived up to our need to protect American interests, to live our values and assert our values, and to stand up for future generations.

We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and never allow the President and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block.

In this remarkable time for the world, I refuse to believe it's time to stop believing in the possibilities of our remarkable country. I refuse to accept the downsizing of the American Dream. I refuse to bet against American entrepreneurial spirit and American ingenuity.The competition's tough, and it requires us to be tougher - tough-minded, never hard hearted.

We have staring us in the face here an enormous opportunity to actually find a way forward to have peace and stability in Syria, to reconstitute it. It'll take years to do that. This will not be an easy fight even with concerted coordination with respect to ISIL. But it is far more doable with that kind of approach than otherwise.

I am a veteran, I fought in a war. I've been a prosecutor. I've sent people to jail for the rest of their life.

I'm Going To Make Available To Every American The Same Health Care Plan That Senators And Congressmen Give Themselves.

War on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation.

I know that our country is strongest when we lead the world, when we lead strong alliances. And that's the way Eisenhower and Reagan and Kennedy and others did it.

It's hard to believe that in the greatest democracy in the world, we need legislation to prevent the government from writing and paying for the news.

Jesus did not help just the sick who could afford to pay for it.

We are not interested in a proxy war. Our objective is to change Russia's behavior.

I had a chance to talk with President [Vladimir] Putin and he clearly said to me very directly, "I will think about that. I will think about this challenge of how we win." Look, this is not easy for Putin. Everybody says, "Oh, Putin's made a big move." Well, Putin is [in Syria] now; and if he wants to fight ISIL alone, that's a challenge, folks.

Climate change is real. The science is compelling. And the longer we wait, the harder the problem will be to solve.

American can do better, and help is on the way.

It took President Obama to make America lead like America again.

It’s time we framed every question - every issue -- not in terms of what’s in it for ‘me,’ but what’s in it for all of us?