John McCain Quotes

I worry about a culture that devalues life and believe as your president I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world.

But I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing in regard to our security more than anything that I can remember in the past.

Today, we realize there are those actively seeking to harm us, to destroy our infrastructure and take lives.

And we think that our citizens and yours would be very angry if they thought that we hadn't taken every possible step for prevention and then for joint action in the likelihood of those who threaten our lives and our well- being, taking action at the same time.

The reality is that we can no longer sleep soundly at night thinking that if we keep the terrorists 'out there,' we are safe inside our homes and offices. That illusion is gone.

What we've done as a country is, we've said we owe it to our citizens to know who is traveling here and if they intend to do us harm.

President Bush insisted that there was nothing in the August 6th, 2001 briefing, which was titled 'Bin Laden determined to attack the United States', that hinted what bin Laden was up to. Bush says that he would have moved mountains to stop the attack. Yeah, but he draws the line at reading a memo.

As president, improving cyber security will be an immediate and top priority for my administration.

I recommended to the president [George Bush] that our focus had to be on al-Qaida, the Taliban and Afghanistan. Those were the ones who attacked the United States of America on 9/11.

I think we'll see it mostly in the United States. We're getting to the point where al Qaeda is ready to again attack us inside America. I think we're basically defenseless.

America is less safe today than it was the day that Barack Obama became President of the United States. It's absolutely inarguable.

The capture of Saddam has not made America safer.

America is less safe today than it was the day that Barack Obama became president of the United States.

In America, we believe in peace through strength, and that's what we will have.

When our children and grandchildren look back on this period, one question will overwhelm all the rest: Did we do everything in our power to fight and to win the war on terror? That's the fundamental question this generation faces.

I'm very grateful that Barack Obama as president very much put protection of privacy on the agenda today, due to the fact of Islamist terrorism all over the world.

I spent seven years of my life in the immediate aftermath of September 11th doing this work, working with the Patriot Act, working with our law enforcement, working with the surveillance community to make sure that we keep America safe.

I think the world has changed dramatically since September 11th. It should force us to recognize that we are going to have to defend the free institutions of our society against those who are simply not willing to belong to a civil order.

This is my number one priority. I've got a lot of things on my plate. But my top priority is to defeat ISIL and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that's been taking place around the world. Groups like ISIL can't destroy us. They can't defeat us. They don't produce anything. They're not an existential threat to us. It is very important for us to not respond with fear.

For our country to be safe from terrorists we must stabilize Iraq and show that it can be done and take out these terrorist organizations who would harm Americans. Our freedom is at stake here.

The terrorist attacks on September the 11th were a turning point for our nation. We saw the goals of a determined enemy to expand the scale of their murder and force America to retreat from the world. And our nation accepted a mission. We will defeat this enemy. The United States of America is determined to guard our homeland against future attacks. As the September 11th Commission concluded, our country is safer than we were three years ago, but we are not yet safe

The president and the executive branch are always going to have greater latitude and greater authority when it comes to protecting America because sometimes you just have to respond quickly and not everything that is a danger can be publicized and be subject to open debate, but there have to be some guardrails.

The terrorists do not understand America. The American people do not falter under threat, and we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins.

We need a president who understands the first obligation of the commander-in-chief is to keep America safe. If I am elected president, we will hunt down and kill the terrorists. We will utterly destroy ISIS.

The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.