Quotes from John F. Kerry

In the 1950s and '60s, America's natural resources were in bad shape. Communities were so polluted that clouds of smog lingered over cities like Los Angeles. Rivers and lakes were filled with chemicals. In my hometown of Boston, the harbor was among the nation's most polluted waterways.

I am committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct for government officials.

War should be not a war of choice; it should be a war of necessity. And it should be a last resort.

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.

The Paris Agreement's going to continue without the United States of America.

We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children.

Our troops are terrorizing women and children in the dark of night in Iraq.

It's not normal that, when you close your eyes and listen to the news, too often the political back-and-forth in America sounds too much like it does in the kinds of countries that the State Department warns Americans not to travel to.

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.

You can't let concerns stop you; they drive you and they motivate you.

For sure, there are times when one may have no choice but to go to war, but it is never something to rush to or accept without exploring every other available option.

In 1970, as a 26 year-old, I joined in the effort in my home state of Massachusetts to organize for Earth Day. But what made the event so successful was that I was only one of about 20 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds who got involved.

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

We don't need a president who just says, "Gentlemen, start your engines." We need a president who says, America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.

We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.

What we need to do is raise the minimum wage. We also need to hold onto equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America.

The most powerful Vietnam movie, to me, was 'The Deer Hunter,' which was more about what happened to the folks who went and about their relationships.

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

At every step of the way, George W. Bush has put the narrow interests of the few ahead of the interests of most Americans.

I think, in the long run, we have to wean ourselves from a carbon-based economy. We absolutely have to.

I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that's how we're going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

America has not led but fled on the issue of global warming.

As a public person, I've always tried to reflect what is embodied in our defining ideals as a nation about equality and fairness and justice and so forth.