Top 38 Quotes & Sayings by Jeh Johnson

War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children.

No level of border security, no wall, doubling the size of the border patrol, all these things will not stop the illegal migration from countries as long as a 7-year-old is desperate enough to flee on her own and travel the entire length of Mexico because of the poverty and the violence in her country.

And so border security is not simply preventing people from getting in, but very often preventing somebody from leaving for the wrong reasons.

The arc of the American story is long, it is bumpy and uncertain, but it always bends toward a more perfect union.

Those of us in public office and those of us who aspire to public office have a responsibility to be reasonable, fact-based, in our rhetoric and to not suggest things that are unreasonable, to whip up a lot of emotion in public, which can lead to government overreach, fear, suspicions, and prejudice.

We continually evaluate the world situation, and we not infrequently make changes to aviation security. We either step it up or we feel sometimes we're in a position to dial it back, and so this is something that happens periodically, and people should not overreact to it or over-speculate about what's going on.

History will record not only the transformational changes President Obama brought about, but also that in 2008, he was elected president with 69 million votes - the largest popular vote for any one person in the history of this country, based on a campaign of hope and inspiration.

ISIL, AQ, now have the ability to literally reach into our homeland through social media, through the Internet, to recruit and inspire. It makes for a more complicated homeland security environment. And so it requires a whole of government approach, not just military and law enforcement, homeland security, aviation security, and the like.

There is a terrorist threat to this country that remains, and I believe that counter-terrorism needs to be the cornerstone of our mission, our vast mission... and aviation security is something that we still have a fair amount of concerns about.

Most victims of ISIL are, in fact, Muslims. So it seems to me that to refer to ISIL as occupying any part of the Islamic theology is playing on a - a battlefield that they would like us to be on. I think that to call them - to call them some form of Islam gives the group more dignity than it deserves, frankly.

Overly simplistic suggestions that we ban people from entering this country, based on religion, or ban people from an entire region of the world is counterproductive. It will not work. We need to build bridges to communities, to American-Muslim communities right now, to encourage them to help us in our homeland security efforts.

The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.

Immigration is the most difficult issue I've ever dealt with, and I've dealt with some tough issues: drones, gays in the military, WikiLeaks, Guantanamo. But immigration is hardest because there are so few people willing to talk and build consensus. Everybody's firmly made up their mind. It's a polarized issue.

There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn't a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

What got me motivated was my dad's idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It's an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C's and D's to straight A's by the time I left.

Yes, it is frustrating to listen to those who foment fear, suspicion and intolerance, who don't know the mistakes of history, and are in the midst of repeating them. Have faith that the character of the American people as a whole is such that, in the end, we will choose not to drink this brand of soiled milk.

The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.

It is almost always the case that when someone self-radicalizes, someone close to them sees the sign, which is why we continue to encourage public awareness, public vigilance.

We have to face the fact that meaningful gun control has to be a part of homeland security.

It's better for candidates to suggest ideas that are responsible, not ones that are incapable of being executed. People are influenced by what their leaders tell them. And bringing the level of rhetoric down brings the temperature down.

Rhetoric that vilifies American Muslims is counter to our efforts. It's a setback to our Homeland Security efforts.

Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an 'assassination.'

How could somebody be comfortable with authorizing legally the use of lethal force? My view is if you become comfortable with it, then you should get out of the job.

President Trump talks about extreme vetting, and we actually do have extreme vetting when it comes to refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement is the most thorough, cumbersome, multilayered vetting system we have for the admission of anyone to the country.

And we need a president who is a uniter, not a divider; who can lower the temperature, not raise the temperature. And I wish President Trump would spend more time trying to go beyond his immediate base to reach people, and use the presidential microphone to try to bring people together, instead of the rhetoric that seems to divide us.

There's a lot of sensitivity about federal involvement in elections around the country. I think that it would be appropriate to consider - whether there should be some basic federal minimum standards to the cybersecurity around the election infrastructure. We have federal standards for aviation security, for auto safety, for a lot of things, and elections are pretty important in the country.

We are very definitely in a new phase in the global terrorist threat where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment.

Politics, in my judgment, has become not just the means to a policy ends, but it's become the end itself. Politics has become the sport that we all watch, and we all pay attention to.

The good news is that the international coalition, in which our military contributes, has done a lot to reduce the ground space, the territory in Iraq, Syria that ISIL once occupied a couple years ago. That's a good thing. And a lot of that, frankly, has occurred in Trump administration, so I'll give them credit for that.

I think that the potential for homegrown terrorist attacks is something that we have to be very concerned about, because, in many respects, it's harder to detect when you have an independent actor who may be living in our midst, in our own communities.

I'll never forget what a Catholic priest told me; he said, "If you try to padlock the door, you have to give people an alternative path - an alternative, safer path. You can't padlock, and you shouldn't padlock a burning building."

With every case from years ago there should be lessons learned.

In my view, and in the view of a lot of intelligence experts, the terrorist threat that we face now has morphed significantly from the days of 9/11 to homegrown violent extremism. We have to be concerned and focused on homegrown violent extremism, countering violent extremism that exists within our borders.

If you build - if you spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall over, let's say, a mountain, if you build a 10-foot wall over a 10,000-foot mountain, and someone is determined to climb the 10,000-foot mountain, they're not going to be deterred by the 10-foot wall. It's a matter of common sense.

I think that ISIS is a problem and it's really a symptom of a much greater problem.

The Secret Service hates to complain about something. They're secret by nature. They're not boastful; they don't like to be in the limelight. And therefore, they need middle management, i.e., a Cabinet-level person, to be their advocate, to Congress, to the White House, to ensure that they have adequate funding.

I hope that the states are taking seriously their obligations to harden the cybersecurity around the election infrastructure that Americans rely upon and need.