Quotes from John McCain

You can disagree with someone on issues, but you should never get personal. Joe Biden has never gotten personal, to my knowledge, with a fellow senator.

Courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility

I am confident, with the leadership and the backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around.

The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, "Senator, we ought to change the policy," then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.

I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.

We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and, in many respects, to conduct foreign policy. Whether we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates. We are his equal!

I believe in prayer. I pray every night.

I've always given presidents the benefit of the doubt on their nominees.

The American people want us to stop spending. And so let's just give them some certainty. Let's extend the tax - the existing tax cuts. And then let's give some more tax breaks to small businesses and large. And then maybe the American people will have some confidence.

You raise taxes during an economic crisis time, as we did in - back in the time of Herbert Hoover, you send the country into a depression.

Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.

Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. That's not how we were meant to govern.

I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.

On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe if people want to have private ceremonies, that's fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.

I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel.

Personally, I liked Admiral Kelso very much. I believe that he served his country with distinction.

The way you have bipartisan negotiations, you sit down across the table, as we did with Ted Kennedy, as I've done with many other members, and you say, 'OK, here's what I want, here's what you want. We'll adhere to your principles, but we'll make concessions.'

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

Whenever America sends its citizens into harm's way, it must do so with eyes wide open.

Most great leaders in history that I've studied always need to get as wide a range of opinions as possible so that they can have sufficient information to make the right decisions.

I think it's important that the President of the United States consult as widely as possible with those who have different views so that he can - he or she - can make the most informed decisions.

What is most troubling about Mr. Putin's aggression in Crimea is that it reflects a growing disregard for America's credibility in the world. That has emboldened other aggressive actors - from Chinese nationalists to Al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian theocrats.