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Quotes by John F. Kerry

America now stands as the world's foremost power. We should be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we do not seek an empire.
– John F. Kerry
American can do better, and help is on the way.
– John F. Kerry
Americans have a responsibility to each other - that America is still in the process of becoming - and that we are privileged to serve here to make that dream real for all Americans.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
Between now and the time I'm sworn in January 2005, I'm going to use every day to make this president accountable for making a mockery of the words 'No Child Left Behind.'
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
Governor Dean has no policy on Iraq evidently, except 'no.' 'No' is not a policy.
– John F. Kerry
Here I am in the state of New Mexico. George Bush is still in the state of denial. New Mexico has five electoral votes. The state of denial has none. I like my chances.
– John F. Kerry
I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I can make American safer than President Bush has made us.
– John F. Kerry
I don't think losing 3 million jobs, having deficits as far as the eye can go, having 2 million people lose their health insurance, turning your back on kids in schools and not funding No Child Left Behind represents a vision.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I know something about aircraft carriers for real.
– John F. Kerry
I look forward to standing up and holding George Bush accountable for pushing seniors off of Medicare into HMOs.
– John F. Kerry
I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions.
– John F. Kerry
I promise just to serve two terms. Republicans do it differently. They just have the son repeat the father's whole first term.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I think the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide.
– John F. Kerry
I think there has been an exaggeration of the terrorist threat.
– John F. Kerry
I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I will never conduct a war or start a war because we want to; the United States of America should only go to war because we have to. And if you live by that guidance, you'll never have veterans throwing away their medals or standing up in protest.
– John F. Kerry
I'll answer it straight to America. I'm not going to appoint a judge to the Court who's going to undo a constitutional right, whether it's the First Amendment, or the Fifth Amendment, or some other right that's given under our courts today - under the Constitution. And I believe that the right of choice is a constitutional right.
– John F. Kerry
I'll never give a veto to any country over our security.
– John F. Kerry
I'm against the ongoing push for reducing restrictions on media concentration. It's contrary to the greater goals of democracy for the country.
– John F. Kerry
I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I'm Going To Make Available To Every American The Same Health Care Plan That Senators And Congressmen Give Themselves.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
I'm proud to say that Martin Luther King touched all of us, but particularly touched the spirit of my generation with his life, his spirit, his activism - and ultimately the lessons and legacy he left behind for us to carry on.
– John F. Kerry
I'm tired of my tax dollars going to Arab leaders who support schools that teach people how to drive airplanes into our buildings.
– John F. Kerry
I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
If I am president, I will be prepared to use military force to protect our security, our people and our vital interests, the Massachusetts senator said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. But I will never send our troops into harm's way without enough firepower and support.
– John F. Kerry
If indeed there is a war against terrorism, I remind my colleagues that in war, the first shots are never the last - and the first strike is never the worst.
– John F. Kerry
It's textbook Washington bait-and-switch budgeting that puts special interests ahead of families. The administration is sweeping under the carpet the huge costs of some of their most reckless policies, and is doing next to nothing to rein in out-of-control spending in Washington.
– John F. Kerry
Military families have higher expenses during deployments, and they should be able to make penalty-free withdrawals from their Individual Retirement Accounts for increased child care and other deployment-related expenses.
– John F. Kerry
More parents are teaching their children about embarrassment, about lying, about humiliation, about family hurt, and about public responsibility, than before we heard the name Monica Lewinsky.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
Never again will a million African Americans be denied the right to exercise their vote in the United States of America.
– John F. Kerry
No one can doubt or should doubt that we are safer - and Iraq is better - because Saddam Hussein is now behind bars.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.
– John F. Kerry
Only in Washington would anyone call this budget fiscally responsible. Every American family has to live within their means. Their government should, too.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
Real Democrats don't abandon the middle class.
– John F. Kerry
Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in iraq doesn't make it so.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself.
– John F. Kerry
The June 30 deadline is a fiction. You don't set an arbitrary date for the transfer of power to a nonentity.
– John F. Kerry
The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
– John F. Kerry
The problems of health care can be solved if we stop giving tax cuts to those who have the most, and start making health care affordable for those working harder and harder for too little.
– John F. Kerry
The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them.
– John F. Kerry
The world today has a strong democratic core shaped by American ingenuity, sacrifice, and spirit.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
This president has created an economy that feeds the special interests, the powerful and the corporate power, and he has not helped the average American worker advance their cause. I will.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
Throughout our history, in peaceful exertion and in armed struggle, we were steadfast - we were right on the central issue of freedom, and we prevailed. And because we prevailed the world is a far better place than it was or would otherwise have been.
– John F. Kerry
Unlike Washington, which is stuck in ideological gridlock, Americans feel the impact of climate change in their own hometowns and they know something must be done.
– John F. Kerry
We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time.
– John F. Kerry
We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights.
– John F. Kerry
We cannot ever guarantee that some fanatic will not find a way to upset the civilized order. But we can guarantee that anyone facilitating or associated with such an act will pay the highest price.
– John F. Kerry
We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.
– John F. Kerry
We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it.
– John F. Kerry
We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance.
– John F. Kerry
We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
– John F. Kerry
We need a commander in chief and a vice president who puts the interests of our troops and our taxpayers ahead of their big money friends.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
We need to be smarter about now we wage a war on terror. We need to deny them the recruits. We need to deny them the safe havens. We need to rebuild our alliances.
– John F. Kerry
We need to signal to the world that we are prepared to shoulder our fair share. And we need to put action behind our words by accepting responsible pollution limits and engaging the developing world.
– John F. Kerry
We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children.
– John F. Kerry
We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
– John F. Kerry
What I've always said is - and I defended Bill Clinton's position, and I would defend the president's choice with respect to going into the Guard. I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard.
– John F. Kerry
What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States.
– John F. Kerry
When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.
– John F. Kerry
I believe America's best days are ahead of us because I believe that the future belongs to freedom, not to fear.
– John F. Kerry
I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA.
– John F. Kerry
I'm glad the President finally found an economic development program. I'm just sad that it's only in Baghdad.
– John F. Kerry
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.
– John F. Kerry
At every step of the way, George W. Bush has put the narrow interests of the few ahead of the interests of most Americans.
– John F. Kerry
I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president.
– John F. Kerry