John Bolton quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • It's not natural disasters that are to blame for the deprivation of the North Korean people, but the failed policies of Kim Jong Il.

  • If Iran obtains nuclear weapons, then almost certainly Saudi Arabia will do the same, as will Egypt, Turkey and perhaps others in the region.

  • Obama sees America as another country on the UN role call. Somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.

  • I don't think Hamas will be satisfied simply ruling the Gaza Strip.

  • The European arguments against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act demonstrate that "some Europeans have never lost faith in appeasement as a way of life. It is clear that Iran is cynically manipulating gullible (or equally cynical) Europeans to advance its development of weapons of mass destruction.

  • There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

  • Just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat. I think that is the threat. I think it's just facing reality. It's not a happy reality, but it's reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant.

  • I don't think I would have to run a campaign that's financed like General Motors.

  • I think that Ronald Reagan had it right, being against abortion except in certain limited, defined circumstances.

  • Well, I'm a libertarian conservative, so I believe in limited government/maximum individual freedom.

  • There is no such thing as the United Nations.

  • There is no excuse for waste, fraud, and abuse in the Defense Department budget.

  • Reform is not a one-night stand.

  • I've never attended any Tea Party functions.

  • I think some of this fascination with the 'Arab Spring' is just a grand experiment with Israel's survival.

  • My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have.

  • Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage.

  • A lot of people have said to me, 'That's a great idea, running for president. You'll get booked for more speeches. You can write a book.'

  • I don't much believe in bumper sticker characterizations of foreign policy.

  • I think the International Criminal Court could be a threat to American security interests, because the prosecutor of the court has enormous discretion in going after war crimes. And the way the Statute of Rome is written, responsibility for war crimes can be taken all the way up the chain of command.

  • Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

  • I've been in the government bureaucracy, I've practiced law, I've done a lot of different things.

  • Politicians, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war.

  • People don't like to talk about victory and defeat anymore.

  • There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values. That's not the call of patriotism.

  • I am all in favour of democracy in Iraq.

  • In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

  • When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence.

  • People say you favor assassination, what do you think war is? Except that it's assassination on a much larger scale, a much more horrific scale.

  • It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

  • The Nobel Peace Prize has become hopelessly politicized. I think it cheapens the prize itself.

  • North Korea is going to get away with keeping its nuclear weapons.

  • Let me ask, who died and made him king? Who gave him the authority to endanger 300 million Americans? That's not the way it works, and if he thinks he can get away with that, he's got another think coming.

  • Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

  • The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.

  • Every country has an aspect to it that rubs up people the wrong way.

  • My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting 'look at this.' It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all.

  • Swapping Bergdahl for illegal enemy combatants (terrorists, in common parlance) signaled unmistakably to Taliban and al Qaeda that Obama is determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost to the United States or those in Afghanistan fighting to remain free.

  • The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.

  • I am pro-American.

  • Obviously, you make preparations before you engage in any meeting.

  • I want to make sure that, not only in the Republican Party but in the body politic as a whole, people are aware of threats that remain to the United States.

  • I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the nature of the threats around the world that we face.

  • There's no such thing as the United Nations,

  • There's no doubt that Iran funds and supplies Hamas with weapons.

  • You know, as somebody who writes op-eds and appears on the television, I appreciate as well as anybody that... there is a limit to what that accomplishes.

  • We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year.

  • I don't do carrots.

  • I've been subject to how many security clearance procedures and I must say as irritating as some people may find them I think they are absolutely essential to making sure that people who work in sensitive positions in the national security field in our government are entirely loyal to the United States.

  • I don't think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn't gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it.

  • You don't need to spend tens of millions of dollars on political consultants to tell you what you think when you already know what you think.

  • I think that, especially among conservatives, there's a clear understanding that there are three legs to the conservative stool. There are the free-market economics conservatives, the social conservatives, and the national-security conservatives.

  • Well, you could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we'd all probably be better for it too.

  • If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member, the United States, because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world. All international laws are invalid, meaningless attempts to constrict American power.

  • Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama

  • Although we refer to the International Criminal Court, the real problem is the prosecutor, because it's the prosecutor who decides who to investigate and what cases to bring. This court fundamentally embodied a potential for abuse of governmental power that I felt was inconsistent with being a free person - and [it was] inconsistent for a free country like the United States to subscribe to it.

  • I think the International Criminal Court could be a threat to American security interests, because the prosecutor of the court has enormous discretion in going after war crimes.

  • I'm a conservative Republican. I have been since I was 15 years old and participated in the 'Goldwater for President' campaign in 1964.

  • By creating a prosecutor who is overseen over by a court, they are melding executive and judicial power in a way that can lead to terrible abuses - as the founders of America understood full well. It's why they created a system of separated powers - to set up a constitutional mechanism that would enhance freedom, by making sure that no one's accumulation of power could predominate over [that of] others.

  • Let there be no ambiguity about the American view that Syria's lack of cooperation .. is not acceptable.

  • If a prosecutor in The Hague decides that the U.S. has not followed through effectively on an investigation - is unwilling or unable to carry it through - then that person, that prosecutor, in an unreviewable fashion gets to second-guess the United States? That is unacceptable. That is an assertion of authority over and above the U.S. Constitution.

  • I haven't given up on the possibility that sweet reason will prevail.

  • I am not a neoconservative.

  • The way the Statute of Rome is written, responsibility for war crimes can be taken all the way up the chain of command. This is the sort of investigation that some people who live in Fairyland might like to undertake, but which bears no relationship at all to conditions in the real world.

  • The International Criminal Court uses a prosecution-only approach. And by putting their fate in the hands of outsiders, countries are really dodging responsibility for actions taken in the name of that country, in the name of the people in that country, by the people of that country themselves. That is, I think, fundamentally the wrong direction to go in.

  • I would not run as a one-issue candidate. Anybody who does that is declaring himself to be marginal.

  • As you know, I have over the years written critically about the U.N. I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers.

  • I've been surrounded by some of the best economic minds in the country, and hopefully I've absorbed some of that.

  • I am not a professional politician.

  • Don't get me wrong: I would love to be president.

  • Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

  • I'm not sure history has ended.

  • I have decided not to run for president.

  • You know, as somebody who writes op-eds and appears on the television, I appreciate as well as anybody that there is a limit to what that accomplishes.

  • I'm not running around the world looking for ways to create hostilities.

  • There's no religious test under the constitution. That's what it says. Period.

  • Maybe it's my libertarian philosophy: but being in government is hard.

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share