John F. Kerry Quotes

I’m a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth, and they’ll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.

The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself.

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

The Paris Agreement’s going to continue without the United States of America.

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.

I am committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct for government officials.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

I think, in the long run, we have to wean ourselves from a carbon-based economy. We absolutely have to.

War should be not a war of choice; it should be a war of necessity. And it should be a last resort.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Climate change, if unchecked, is an urgent threat to health, food supplies, biodiversity, and livelihoods across the globe.

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.

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.