John Kerry Quotes

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.

It’s very hard really to look a soldier in the eye when you fear that you are sending him to his death.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.

It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.

The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice.

The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes. I see it as a large thing too, only I break it into small units of one man at a time, and see it as a large and monstrous thing for each man involved. I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers, and all the men who survived the war, including myself, I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war.

More than a million Americans have died in our wars—each one much loved by someone.

The cost of war is constantly spread before me written in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones.

A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.

Troops of heroes undistinguished die.

I mean the only thing us dead soldiers got in common is that none of us was good enough or lucky enough to survive the fight. We're a host of failures.

My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?

I went to war. .... I survived, while other men around me died. ... men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.

I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths.

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.