Top 345 Quotes & Sayings by John F. Kerry
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American politician John F. Kerry.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
NAFTA recognizes the reality of today's economy - globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity.
We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
I am committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct for government officials.
The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself.
The solution to climate change is staring us in the face. It's energy policy. If we pursue a global clean-energy economy, we can cut dramatically the amount of carbon pollution we emit into the atmosphere and prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.
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 would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA.
I'm a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth, and they'll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.
Republican secretaries of state from Kissinger to Baker, Powell to Rice, President Bush, 71 United States Senators all supported President Obama's new START treaty, but not Mitt Romney.
I think George Mitchell is a consummate professional. He is the ideal selection to handle the job of special envoy if you choose to have a special envoy.
It's not enough for one country or even a few countries to reduce emissions when other countries continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon pollution as they see fit.
In the time I've spent in public life, one of the things I've learned is that some issues look a lot different when you're actually in office compared to when you're on the campaign trail.
I went into the Navy because I love the ocean, and I am still privileged to have a place that I can go to that's by the water.
War should be not a war of choice; it should be a war of necessity. And it should be a last resort.
Mitt Romney says he believes in America and that he will restore American exceptionalism. I have news for him, we already have an exceptional American as president and we believe in Barack Obama.
Young people have so much more power than they tend to think to be able to affect politics. And if people will organize and get involved and go out and knock on doors and hand out leaflets and make a change, then they can determine the future.
When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy.
In 1970, as a 26 year-old, I joined in the effort in my home state of Massachusetts to organize for Earth Day. But what made the event so successful was that I was only one of about 20 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds who got involved.
It took President Obama to make America lead like America again.
The most powerful Vietnam movie, to me, was 'The Deer Hunter,' which was more about what happened to the folks who went and about their relationships.
Climate change, if unchecked, is an urgent threat to health, food supplies, biodiversity, and livelihoods across the globe.
President Obama and I both believe we don't have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.
The bottom line is that the impacts of climate change can exacerbate resource competition, threaten livelihoods, and increase the risk of instability and conflict, especially in places already undergoing economic, political, and social stress.
I love to play guitar and hack around. I was in a band when I was in high school. I never learned to play very well, but I enjoyed it.
My favorite album is 'Abbey Road.' I love 'Hey Jude.'
I know there are a lot of musicians and a lot of artists, and there are a lot of writers and other people who inspire young people, but I'd like to see somebody in political life be able to connect and make these choices that we need to make in Washington real in terms of people's lives.
Foreign policy is effectively the assertion of many individual countries intersecting on the global marketplace. And you have to figure out how to get your interest served in a way that meets the interests and needs of these other folks.
The best way to begin genuine bipartisanship to make America stronger is to work together on the real crises facing our country, not to manufacture an artificial crisis to serve a special interest agenda out of touch with the needs of Americans.
Democracy relies on free speech. Yes, say anything you want, but it relies even more on the speech being truthful. It is the truth, after all, that sets us free.
You can't let concerns stop you; they drive you and they motivate you.
One of the most cherished photographs in my life is a picture of me with John Lennon - who I met back in 1971 at an anti-war rally.
For sure, there are times when one may have no choice but to go to war, but it is never something to rush to or accept without exploring every other available option.
In the 1950s and '60s, America's natural resources were in bad shape. Communities were so polluted that clouds of smog lingered over cities like Los Angeles. Rivers and lakes were filled with chemicals. In my hometown of Boston, the harbor was among the nation's most polluted waterways.
I think, in the long run, we have to wean ourselves from a carbon-based economy. We absolutely have to.
President Obama has made it his mission that we welcome our troops home with care and concern and the respect they deserve. That is how an exceptional nation says thank you to its most exceptional men and women.
If we don't preserve the oceans from nitrate runoff and plastic and chemicals, and if we don't preserve it from acidification, and if we don't preserve it from grotesque overfishing - too much money chasing too few fish - we're going to have the most massive ecosystem on the planet in peril.
You just don't, in the 21st century, behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.
I have been passionate about the oceans since I dipped my toes in the water at the first age of three.
I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.
The Paris Agreement's going to continue without the United States of America.
If you've ever played golf, you know that you yell 'fore' off the tee. You're not threatening somebody; you're warning them: 'Look, don't get hit by the ball, it's coming.'
Real Democrats don't abandon the middle class.
It's not normal that, when you close your eyes and listen to the news, too often the political back-and-forth in America sounds too much like it does in the kinds of countries that the State Department warns Americans not to travel to.
There's an agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united; that it needs to be secular; that ISIL needs to be taken on; and that there needs to be a managed transition, but there is a difference obviously in what that means and what that outcome may or may not be.
We need to guarantee equal rights and civil rights and say that, here in America, workers have the right to organize - women have the right to choose - and justice belongs to everyone regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation.
You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!
My definition of patriotism is to defend your country with the truth, no matter the consequences.
Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid down in scriptures, clearly.
Climate change is real. The science is compelling. And the longer we wait, the harder the problem will be to solve.
Values spoken without actions taken are merely slogans.
When the nations of the world look upon the United States, they see a country which has achieved what they would all like to become one day. Whether it is in the field of science, art, music, agriculture, politics, economics or war, the United States is the leader.
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.
The problem with the American health-care system that it is not working for the American family.
America has everything most countries envy. A Constitution which is the treasure of mankind, a strong military, natural resources of every kind. Above all, as Tocqueville said, a good people, which is what makes us great.
The hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are yet to come.
There is no greater breach of the public trust than knowingly misleading the country into war. In a democracy, we simply cannot tolerate the abuse of this trust by the government.
Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
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.
Great physicians and nurses, skilled, caring and unparalleled in their training, intervened in my life and probably saved it. I was lucky but other Americans are not. It is time to speak again and stand again for the ideal that in the richest nation ever on this planet, it is wrong for 41 million Americans, most of them in working families, to worry at night and wake up in the morning without the basic protection of health insurance.
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