John Kerry Quotes

How do you tell troops who volunteered to fight for our freedoms that the country they fought for won't take care of them when they come back? In the time of war our troops and their families are supposed to be our number one priority.

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.

I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.

Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.

I was reluctant to be critical of the United States because I thought the United States could do no wrong; that the government could not lie to its people.

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.

When you join the army, you are asked to lay down your life for your country. That is a tremendous oath to take. In return, a good country should offer that soldier every possible means it can to allow that soldier to stay alive and, upon return, healthy - both mentally and physically.

Your King and Country need you.

We believe in American government, and we fully expect that those who now denigrate it, and even despise it, will soon or late find themselves turning to it in necessity, even desperation.

I should not care to live half-frozen in a trench, up to my middle in water, for three or four months, because someone in authority said I ought to shoot Germans. But if I were a Frenchman I should do it, because I would have been accustomed to the idea by my compulsory military service.

Everyone’s future has changed in these six months last past. This is to be a terrible, ruinous war, and a war in which the nation cannot succeed. It can never subjugate these savage millions of the South. It must make peace at last with the barbarous communities off its Southern frontier. I was prosperous and well off last November. I believe my assets to be reduced fifty per cent, at least. But I hope I can still provide wholesome training for my three boys. With that patrimony they can fight out the battle of life for themselves. Their mother is plucky and can stand self-denial. I clearly see that this is a most severe personal calamity to me, but I welcome it cordially, for it has shown that I belong to community that is brave and generous, and that the City of New York is not sordid and selfish.

Our oath is not to a politician, or to the party in power, or to the President. It is to the Constitution.

This idle complaining, wishing, and lamenting, and boasting will answer no end. Something must be done! Must be done by you! Therefore instead of assuming the state of patriots and heroes at home, TO ARMS! and away to the field and prove your pretensions sincere. Let the thunder of this imprecation rouse you out of your ease and security...

Gentlemen of the Congress of the United States who put us into this war, it is your duty now to give us sufficient means of making war. If the folks at home did not want you to go to war, it was your duty to think of that before you declared war. It is in no way right or reasonable or wise or patriotic for you to project the Nation into war, and then in unfounded fear for your own future, deny the Nation the method best qualified and calculated to make victorious war.

It was a sane, humane, and politic treaty which put an end to that horrible butchery of slaying the conquered, of giving no quarter to prisoners of war – Spanish barbarism that the patriots were forced to adopt themselves in reprisal, that had pushed back civilization, made the soil of Columbia an abode of cannibals and soaked it with innocent blood until all humanity shuddered, It was an advantage to us, fatal to the Spaniards. Their forces could only diminish; mine, augment and organize.

Our servicemen and women have been doing right by America for generations. And, as long as I am commander in chief, America’s going to do right by them.

Our government is asking people to continue fighting wars for us but we don't always treat them as well as we do when they're active duty.

While President Obama was starting and expanding unconstitutiona l wars overseas, Bradley Manning, whose actions have caused exactly zero deaths, was shining light on the truth behind these wars.

There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is.

No man has the right to say to his country

I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.

Supporters of the war are constantly asking those who oppose it: Why don't you deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side? The answer, so far as I am concerned, is that I do deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side. But I am responsible for the wrongs and atrocities committed by our side. And I am no longer able to participate in the assumption that atrocities committed by remote control are less objectionable than those committed at arm's length. I am most concerned with American obstacles to peace because I am an American.

I see myself as a human being. You're right, I am an American, I do live in Utah, and I am deeply ashamed about the decisions our President is making around the world, in our name: the war in Iraq, his continued denial about global warming, the wholesale degradation of the environment on every level. Since September 11, 2001, I have come to believe that there are many forms of terrorism, and environmental degradation is one of them. We have to transcend our government and relate to each other as human beings first and Americans second and feel both our local and global responsibilities.

A really great people, proud and high spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor.

A Pentagon official once said the people who would actually push the button probably have never seen a person die. He said the only hope -and it's a strange thought - is if they put the button to launch the nuclear war behind a man's heart. The President, then, with a rusty knife, would have to cut out the man's heart, kill the man, to get to the button.