Top 180 John F. Kerry Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

102. “In a few years, you should be able to plug your American-made plug-in hybrid into the outlet in your garage, so that you never use a drop of gas on your daily commute. This won’t happen overnight, but I promise you, it is closer than you think.”

— John F. Kerry

103. “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

104. “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

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

— John F. Kerry

106. “There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire.”

— John F. Kerry

107. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

108. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

109. “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

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

— John F. Kerry

111. “Those who try to stifle the vibrancy of our democracy and shield policies from scrutiny behind a false cloak of patriotism miss the real value of what our troops defend and how we best defend our troops. We will ask questions and we will defend our democracy.”

— John F. Kerry

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

— John F. Kerry

113. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

114. “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

115. “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

116. “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

117. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

118. “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

119. “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or truth or what’s happening.”

— John F. Kerry

120. “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

121. “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

122. “I will never cede the authority of our country or our security to any other nation. I’ll never give a veto over American security to any other entity – not a nation, not a country, not an institution.”

— John F. Kerry

123. “After Mitt Romney said it would be naive to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order and finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden. Ask Osama bin Laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago!”

— John F. Kerry

124. “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

125. “Democrats proposing success in Iraq by political solution.”

— John F. Kerry

126. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

127. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

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

— John F. Kerry

129. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

130. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

131. “Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I’m going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America’s dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families.”

— John F. Kerry

132. “So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.”

— John F. Kerry

133. “I still believe Americas destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity.”

— John F. Kerry

134. “Governor Dean has no policy on Iraq evidently, except ‘no.’ ‘No’ is not a policy.”

— John F. Kerry

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

— John F. Kerry

136. “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

137. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

138. “It took President Obama to make America lead like America again.”

— John F. Kerry

139. “I’m going to be a president who believes in science.”

— John F. Kerry

140. “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?”

— John F. Kerry

141. “I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA.”

— John F. Kerry

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

— John F. Kerry

143. “If America can go to the moon, then in the decades to come we should not ever have to have young Americans sent to any part of the world to defend and die for America’s gluttony on fossil fuel.”

— John F. Kerry

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

— John F. Kerry

145. “In order to have the best intelligence in the world to know who the terrorists are and where they are and what they’re plotting, you’ve got to have the best cooperation you’ve ever had in the world.”

— John F. Kerry

146. “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

147. “If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community’s already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.”

— John F. Kerry

148. “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.”

— John F. Kerry

149. “If America is at war, I won’t speak a word without measuring how it’ll sound to the guys doing the fighting when they’re listening to their radios in the desert.”

— John F. Kerry

150. “I can tell you, Massachusetts, fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy and energy efficiency companies. And they’re growing faster than any other sector.”

— John F. Kerry