John McCain Quotes
United States Senator
On the subject of Osama bin Laden... we will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell.
Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.
I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.
In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality.
When you're not winning, you're losing.
As far as this business of solitary confinement goes, the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it's only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.
Thank God for our form of government. The media won't let there be any cover-up.
Our political differences, no matter how sharply they are debated, are really quite narrow in comparison to the remarkably durable national consensus on our founding convictions.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight. We're Americans. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will.
America's greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human progress.
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 am frustrated and outraged by the slow nature of change at the VA.
Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.
Giap was a master of logistics, but his reputation rests on more than that. His victories were achieved by a patient strategy that he and Ho Chi Minh were convinced would succeed - an unwavering resolve to suffer immense casualties and the near total destruction of their country to defeat any adversary, no matter how powerful.
My record shows that I have put my country first, and I follow the philosophy and traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
As he assumes the awesome responsibilities of the presidency, Donald Trump has inherited a world on fire and a U.S. military weakened by years of senseless budget cuts. I am encouraged that he recognizes these problems and has pledged to rebuild the military.
War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.
But we should be mindful as we argue about our differences that so much more unites than divides us. We should also note that our differences, when compared with those in many, if not most, other countries, are smaller than we sometimes imagine them to be.
Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.
The core political values of our free society are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that only a few malcontents, lunatics generally, ever dare to threaten them.
I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it.
But please know, whether you believe campaign contributions are speech or property, that I learned to love very dearly the right of free expression when I lived without that freedom for a while a long time ago.
I think that Fox News is a bit schizophrenic.
I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty... break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more.
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.'
For America, our interests are our values, and our values are our interests.
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.
I'm as frustrated with the French, I think, as anyone, but look, there's going to be other challenges and there are going to be other issues. As long as there's a war on terrorism going on, we're all going to have to work together.
Sometimes it's important to watch what the president does rather than what he says.
If we lost, then who won? Did Al Qaida win? When on the floor of the House of Representatives they cheer - they cheer - when they pass a withdrawal motion that is a certain date for surrender, what were they cheering? Surrender? Defeat?
In 1987, I had my first opportunity to provide 'advice and consent' on a Supreme Court nominee. At that time, I stated that the qualifications essential for evaluating a nominee for the bench included 'integrity, character, legal competence and ability, experience, and philosophy and judicial temperament.' On that test, Elena Kagan fails.
Government should take care of those in America who can't care for themselves. That's a role of government.
I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's.
We cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves, from ourselves.
When a president makes life and death decisions, he should draw strength and wisdom from broad and deep experience with the reasons for and the risks of committing our children to our defense. For no matter how many others are involved in the decision, the president is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty reports come in.
If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.
I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it.
On Putin's order, Russia intervenes in Syria not to fight terrorists but to abet the war crimes of the Assad regime. Russian bombers deliberately target aid workers and hospitals. They threaten Syrian freedom fighters trained by the U.S. They are allied with our enemies in the Middle East and trying to weaken our friendships there.
I am a Republican. I'm loyal to the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. And I believe that my party, in some ways, has strayed from those principles, particularly on the issue of fiscal discipline.
I think that it's important that we understand the importance of the Hispanic vote in America.
I believe we should always put our country first.
The tea partiers are a great addition. The tea partiers have invigorated a base that has been dormant for a long period of time. We're going to have a broad array of different views in our Republican conference, and I think it might be more interesting than any I've been in in a long time.
China is the one, the only one, that can control Kim Jong Un, this crazy, fat kid that's running North Korea.
I don't think anybody is - no one could compare to Ronald Reagan, because he was the right man at the right time.
I guess my view is I believe less governance is best governance and that government should not do what the free enterprise and private enterprise and indidividual entrepreneurship and the states can do.
The U.S. never lost a battle against North Vietnam, but it lost the war.
For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.
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.
Civic participation over a lifetime, working in neighborhoods and communities and service of all kinds - military and civilian, full-time and part-time, national and international - will strengthen America's civic purpose.
The problem... is that most members of Congress don't pay attention to what's going on.
Personally, I liked Admiral Kelso very much. I believe that he served his country with distinction.
When Barack Obama won in 2008, in 2009 I voted for his team because I think that - that the American people wanted him to have his team. But don't think I wasn't worried about it. Really worried.
We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital.
As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am confronted every day with the security concerns and threats to our own nation's safety, as well as threats to the rest of the world.
The first role of government is to help people who are in crisis or need. That's why we have government.
The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime.
Putin wants to restore the Russian empire. That's his ambition; he's stated it many times.
America didn't invent human rights. Those rights are common to all people: nations, cultures, and religions cannot choose to simply opt out of them.
The United States expects a lot of its partners and allies, including joint patrolling, significant contributions to armed conflicts, and a strict adherence to human rights, among other things.
You have to listen to people that have chosen the nominee of our Republican Party. I think it would be foolish to ignore them.
Putin's Russia is our adversary and moral opposite. It is committed to the destruction of the post-war, rule-based world order built on American leadership and the primacy of our political and economic values.
Politics abhors a vacuum, and Asian countries will gravitate towards China if U.S. influence is perceived as declining.
I'm sick and tired - and the American people are sick and tired - of the pork barrel spending.
A strong E.U., a strong NATO, and a true strategic partnership between them is profoundly in our interest.
I think it's important for Donald Trump to express his appreciation for veterans - not John McCain, but veterans who were incarcerated as prisoners of war.
As a governor and senator, John Chafee set the standard for honesty and decency that the rest of us on our best days could only dream to emulate.
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.
The president has promised greater border security. We can agree to that. A literal wall might not be the most effective means to that end, but we can provide the resources necessary to secure the border with smart and affordable measures.
My greatest fear is the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon and give it to a terrorist organization. And there is a real threat of them doing that.
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 that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. I believe it's clear that he had every intention to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. I can only imagine what Saddam Hussein would be doing with the wealth he would acquire with oil at $110 and $120 a barrel.
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.
I think ISIS can do terrible things.
To argue against the global economy is like stating opposition to the weather - it continues whether you like it or not.
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.
The French repulsed wave after wave of frontal attacks at Dien Bien Phu. The 1968 Tet offensive against the U.S. was a military disaster that effectively destroyed the Viet Cong. But Giap persisted and prevailed.
We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos; there will be genocide; and they will follow us home.
Saddam Hussein is a risk-taking aggressor who has attacked four countries, used chemical weapons against his own people, professed a desire to harm the United States and its allies, and, even faced with the prospect of his regime's imminent destruction, has still refused to abide by Security Council demands that he disarm.
Political leaders are not and cannot reasonably be expected to be indifferent to the cruelest calumnies aimed at their character.
And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, 'Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area.'
Public life has many more privileges than hardships.
Our armed forces will fight for peace in Iraq, a peace built on more secure foundations than are found today in the Middle East. Even more important, they will fight for two human conditions of even greater value than peace: liberty and justice.
We know that Medicare's going broke in seven years, but we need to start over. That's what the American people want us to do.
On Putin's order, Russian security services try to destabilize NATO allies the U.S. has sworn to defend.
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.
Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three.
Sen. Obama comes from the old Chicago machine politics and has never taken on the special interests in his party on a major issue ever.
I'm sick and tired of only being asked about everything that Donald Trump says or does.
I believe in prayer. I pray every night.
I know in war good people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would normally object to and recoil from.
During one period while I was in solitary, I memorized the names of all 335 of the men who were then prisoners of war in North Vietnam. I can still remember them.
Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power.
We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must also be willing to be persuaded by them.
We are a country with a conscience.
I think that Rand Paul represents a segment of the GOP, just like his father. And I think he is trying to expand that, intelligently, to make it larger.
Barbara Boxer is the most bitterly partisan, most anti-defense senator in the United States Senate today. I know that because I've had the unpleasant experience of having to serve with her.
On 'don't ask, don't tell' I was always the same. I said we needed a complete review of the impact on morale and battle effectiveness of 'don't ask, don't tell' before we repeal it. That's my position now. Now they're trying to ram through a repeal without a - any kind of really realistic survey done.
I consider myself a realist.
I'm not against a border wall, OK, but go to China, and you'll see a border wall there. We need technology, we need drones, we need surveillance capabilities, and we need rapid-reaction capabilities.