Top 345 Quotes & Sayings by John F. Kerry - Page 2

That is what Americans do. We face a challenge - no matter how great - because we know that on the other side there is always hope.

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.

It's very hard to get other countries to give up their weapons when you're busy developing a new one.

We're in a battle for our lives for things that really matter to us. There's a shell game going on like I've never seen before.

What we Americans need to do is respect that incredible blessing that we have as a nation and make sure that we are leading in the best ways possible.

You can't play sports without losing sometimes and, in losing, you learn something about grace and how to act under pressure.

America has an ability to try to make some things happen that other countries don't necessarily have.

And whatever our faith - whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.

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

I supported Israel 100 percent as a senator for 28 years and I've supported it 100 percent as Secretary of State.

We don't need a president who just says, "Gentlemen, start your engines." We need a president who says, America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.

Each and every child in this country is valuable because they are our future as a society. We cannot afford to lose a single child to ill-health, under-education, abuse, addiction, jail, or gun violence. America's highest goal should be for every child to grow up to be a successful young adult -- healthy, educated, free, secure, and a good citizen.

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

What we have to do is go on the offensive. [The science on climate change] has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back... [P]eople [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts themselves.

America is the one that leads the effort to make sure the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is protected.

We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

Remember the hours after Sept. 11 when we came together as one...It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.

Our military is overextended. Nine out of 10 active-duty Army divisions are either in Iraq, going to Iraq or have come back from Iraq. One way or the other, they're wrapped up in it.

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.

Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.

Today, if you're an American business, you actually get a benefit for going overseas. You get to defer your taxes. So if you're looking at a competitive world, you say to yourself, "Hey, I do better overseas than I do here in America".

And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

And if [Vladimir Putin] does fight ISIL alone, how does it work out for Russia to have sided with Assad, sided with Iran, sided with Hizballah, when they're trying to reach out to the rest of the Sunni world in the region? That's not a good equation for Russia.

I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.

America has not led but fled on the issue of global warming.

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

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.

So we can do a better job of homeland security. I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more effective war on terror and guarantee that we will go after the terrorists. I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary to be safe.

The future belongs to freedom, not to fear.

The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed 'window of vulnerability,' which we now know not to exist.

America is the one that has led the effort to strengthen NATO and strengthen the front-line states against Russia's pressures.

We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children.

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

It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and you can be wrong.

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

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.

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.

I've been having problems with the right wing lately.

I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

What we do right now, today, matters.

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

Gender based violence anywhere is a threat to peace and security everywhere.

If you want to be a Jewish state and you want to remain a democracy, you have to have a two-state solution.

I believe it is both unwise and even wrong to interfere in the affairs of other nations. Indeed, if we are honest, we will see that this is one of the reasons for 9-11.

You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.

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?

And now that the Greatest Generation is getting older, I think it is the responsibility of all Americans to make sure we do our part for America's seniors. You have earned the best of America -- and we need to make sure you get the protection and health care you deserve.

I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for all that we had done. I felt goosebumps as I got off a military train and heard the Army band strike up 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'

The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.

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.

You can't have responsibility and you can't have us living up to our ideals unless it's based on a fairly common acceptance of truth, of what is true - what is the truth here?

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

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

Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire.

Just the fact that we can't pass budgets in our Congress, just the fact that we are gridlocked in our own democracy, the fact that everybody who travels can see that we're not investing in our airports, in our rail, in our infrastructure and so forth, people are noticing a United States that is not getting the job done in some ways.

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.

The agreement is fundamentally that we want to try to resolve this. The agreement is that ISIL is a threat to everybody, and we need to come together to find a way to fight ISIL. The agreement is that we want to save Syria, keep it unified, keep it secular. So surely in those very fundamental principles on which we could agree.

I think the United States is still the indispensable force for positive change and for rule of law and for order and structure.

We will fight anyone who wishes to impose a totalitarian system upon a free society, and we will always prevail. But we will not do so with a fear-stricken administration which seeks to deprive us of freedoms in the name of 'defending' us from the terrorists, who also seek to deprive us of our freedoms.