John Kerry Quotes

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

My trademark at CNN was really asking insightful questions and making sure people are understanding the connections in humanity, and I think that is the core of education.

We've known for a long time, and I think culturally we've accepted, that diversity is an important thing in the work of knowledge.

There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding … as we are ourselves.

I listen. I meet with everybody, I don't care what their political persuasion is - whether it be a labor union or small-business folks or individuals who have problems. But I meet with everybody and listen.

Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day.

Traveling around I don't think people are that horrible, I think they just don't know.

It seems no matter what you say and how politically correctly and carefully you say it, you offend someone. Or at least I always do.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.

History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.

To the extent that we are all educated and informed, we will be more equipped to deal with the gut issues that tend to divide us.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

Ignorance is my least favorite thing. I really think it's at the core of all our problems.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

I want to be part of the storytelling that educates people and awakens a sense of compassion in other people of the kind of people they don't encounter in their daily lives very frequently.

To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more.

Obviously, any time you're closer in terms of what your knowledge is to a character, you can add something. But an actor's job is not to play only people he can identify with.

Knowledge of other people's beliefs and ways of thinking must be used to build bridges, not to create conflicts.

I don't feel drawn to lightness, I need something more. I feel that - oh, I hate saying this, it sounds so wanky - but I feel a real urge to give voices to people we don't usually hear from in real life.

Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people.

Every day they [politicians] must weigh in on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge or about which they just don't care.

Books are the greatest weapons against the assholes of the world.

It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.

It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful...so they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good livings, so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows. Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not enough to progress as individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind