John F. Kerry Quotes

I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.

I think the world is safer without Iran with a nuclear weapon. The world has got the potential to be safer if we fully implement the Paris agreement.

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.

If you think I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, don't vote for me.

The big hang-up was George Bush wanted to get life lines, you know, so he could call somebody.

We can't change minds without knowing what's in them.

I get always a little uptight when I hear politicians say how exceptional America is.

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.

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

Strong leadership demands more than the willingness to use force. It means directing the use of the right tools at the right time for the right purpose and the right cause.

We cannot continue to see the Middle East in the context of 9/11. We must see it in the context of 2011.

The measurement in this race is not where you come from, it is "what do you fight for."

Bush-McCain stategy in Iraq is policy to stay, not to win.

Democrats proposing success in Iraq by political solution.

Reduce US military presence in Iraq; and bring in neighbors.

The Ukrainian people should not be coerced. Make no mistake: the US stands together with the Ukrainians aspiring for democracy.

There should be a Transatlantic renaissance between the US and Europe based on shared prosperity, security, and values.

As President, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command.

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.

From the moment I take office, I will stand up to the special interests and stand with hardworking families so that we can give America back its future and its ideals.

I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, you've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that.

No one is going to question my commitment to the defence of our nation. I don't know what it is these Republicans, who didn't serve in any war, have against those of us who are Democrats who did.

The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them.

There is a much cheaper way, less complicated way to bring Iraq and Saddam Hussein to its knees: it is simply to send the Bush economic team over there and let them run the country.

There the Bush Administration has offered only a merry-go-round policy. They got up on their high horse, whooped and hollered, rode around in circles and ended right back where they'd started.

We need a new approach to national security - a bold, progressive internationalism that stands in stark contrast to the too often belligerent and myopic unilateralism of the Bush Administration.

We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways.

I'm not insensitive to the jobs. I'm desperately concerned about those jobs. But you don't fix them by pandering to people and telling them you're going to shut the door. You have to grow jobs.

I'm for ethanol, and I think it's a very important partial ingredient of the overall mix of alternative and renewable fuels we ought to commit to.

George Bush's vision does not live up to the America I enlisted in the Navy to defend, the America I have fought for in the Senate, and the America that I hope to lead as president.

Governor Dean has no policy on Iraq evidently, except 'no.' 'No' is not a policy.

I have confidence in my campaign. I have assembled a great team that is going to beat George W. Bush, and any rumors to the contrary are completely erroneous.

I look forward to standing up and holding George Bush accountable for pushing seniors off of Medicare into HMOs.

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 the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide.

I think there has been an exaggeration [of the terrorist threat].

As a public person, I've always tried to reflect what is embodied in our defining ideals as a nation about equality and fairness and justice and so forth.

I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

My friends, that's trickle-down economics, and I believe every worker in America is tired of being trickled on by George W. Bush

Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman.

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

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

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.

That's what I am standing up for - Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state living side-by-side in peace and security with its neighbors.

Israel gets more than half of all the military purchasing assistance that America gives to all the nations in the world.

This President has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. And judgment is what we look for in the president of the President of the United States of America.

I came into public life during the 1960s when a whole bunch of us believed in our ability to change the world. And we did a lot of things.

We cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now.

Even as a supporter of Roe v. Wade, I am compelled to acknowledge that the language both sides use on this subject can be unfortunately misleading and unconstructive.... Everyone is worse off for it.