John Quotes

Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.

The efforts of governments alone will never be enough. In the end, the people must choose and the people must help themselves.

The only significance of analyzing the past is that it does give us some key to the future.

I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.

In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

I suppose if you could have only one thing, it would be that-energy. Without it, you haven't got a thing.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant.

Just as I went into politics because Joe died, if anything happened to me tomorrow, my brother Bobby would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby died, Teddy would take over for him.

... the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space.

Peace is a process, a way of solving problems

We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age; the search for freedom and self fulfillment of man.

You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble.

We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals.

An artist's working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline.

Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

If we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capcity for thought, for work, and for use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it.

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises, it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.

My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial and beautifully coordinated, there is not much going on.

Now is the time...for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

When you have seven percent unemployed, you have ninety-three percent working.

There is no city in the United States in which I can get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbia, Ohio.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society. ... There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

We don't want to be like the leader in the French Revolution who said There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.

We cannot reform the world.... Uncle Sugar is as dangerous a role for us to play as Uncle Shylock.

Peace does not rest in charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of the people.

This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for all of the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself.

We must create world-wide law and law enforcement as we outlaw world-wide war and weapon

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

I'm an idealist without illusions.

There is no greater breach of the public trust than knowingly misleading the country into war. In a democracy, we simply cannot tolerate the abuse of this trust by the government.

My definition of patriotism is to defend your country with the truth, no matter the consequences.

We're in a battle for our lives for things that really matter to us. There's a shell game going on like I've never seen before.

Gender based violence anywhere is a threat to peace and security everywhere.

And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

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.

Real Democrats don't abandon the middle class.

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?

I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.

I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.

I know something about killing. I don't like killing. And I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing.

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

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy -- make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls.

Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria.

But I say these things in an objective dispassionate manner because, you know, and I can't explain why, but being one of the greatest guitarists in the world simply is not very important to me.

Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.