68+ John Bolton Quotes On Government, War And Education

John Bolton is an American statesman and attorney who served as the 27th United States National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019. He was a foreign policy hawk and was a key figure in the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Bolton is also a former ambassador to the United Nations and has held various other positions in the U.S. government. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Bolton on government, war, education.

Top 10 John Bolton Quotes

1. 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.
2. The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.
3. There's no such thing as the United Nations.
4. Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama.
5. Reform is not a one-night stand.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Obama sees America as another country on the UN role call. Somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.
9. 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.
10. Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

John Bolton Short Quotes

• Obviously, you make preparations before you engage in any meeting.
• People don't like to talk about victory and defeat anymore.
• There is no excuse for waste, fraud, and abuse in the Defense Department budget.
• Politicians, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war.
• I've been in the government bureaucracy, I've practiced law, I've done a lot of different things.
• I've never attended any Tea Party functions.
• There's no religious test under the constitution. That's what it says. Period.
• I'm not running around the world looking for ways to create hostilities.
• The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.
• It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

John Bolton Quotes About China

The solution to North Korea is the reunification of the Korean Peninsula. China could influence the North; it supplies 80 to 90 percent of North Korea's energy. The United States have to put pressure on China in order for China to pressure North Korea. — John Bolton

America needs an adult in the White House who knows how to deal with China. — John Bolton

I think the future of China's unknown, I don't know what direction it's going to go in. It could go in the right direction, it could. It could go in a very bad direction, too. — John Bolton

John Bolton Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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

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. — John Bolton

Just as that little opening in the Iron Curtain that Hungary created caused a flood of people out, and ultimately the beginning of the end of communism in Europe, if you could get refugee flows coming out of North Korea, while there'd be a very difficult humanitarian problem in the short run, both for China and South Korea, in the long run it would lead to reunification. — John Bolton

Iran has essentially mastered all of the complex science and technology that they need to have a completely indigenous nuclear weapons program. That means that our options on Iran are extremely limited, to regime change or as a last resort, the use of force. — John Bolton

I am not a neoconservative. I am pro-American. — John Bolton

A strong State Department to me means a corps of career officials who believe that their job is to advocate America's interests and who are trained in effective advocacy, not schooled in accommodation. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

It was right to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It was the regime itself that was a threat. I think in hindsight, what I would have done is turn authority back over to Iraqis much more quickly and say: "Your country, you figure out how to run it." — John Bolton

I wouldn't give up on Russia, and with oil at $90 a barrel, they can refurbish their strategic capabilities and under an authoritarian regime, those nuclear weapons are still there and in the wrong hands we might have a problem again. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

If you get a President (Hillary) Clinton, you might well find, just as after Vietnam, that there is a retraction from Iraq and of American influence in the world. And in a couple of years the Europeans will be complaining about that too. — John Bolton

I think the Russians basically don't think the North Koreans and the Iranians have the capabilities to get weapon systems that can threaten them, or that if they do the Russians know how to handle them and that that's the reason that it's all the more important that Russians be involved in the sale of high-end conventional weapons, the Bushehr nuclear reactor in the case of Russia and Iran, and similar kinds of relationships. — John Bolton

I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

The North Koreans will sell anything to anybody for hard currency. If Al Queda came up with enough dollars to buy a nuclear weapon from North Korea I don't have any doubt that the North Koreans would sell it to them. — John Bolton

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

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

The Iranian government is the government that supplied the arms on the Karin-A to the Palestinian Authority several years ago, they are the world's largest central banker for terrorism, if they thought it was in their interest to give a terrorist group a nuclear weapon to use against America or against Israel, I don't think they'd hesitate. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

THe Chinese like the satellite state [North Korea] between China and our forces, they fear that in a reunified Korea, American troops would be at the Yalu River and they've seen that movie before. They didn't like it the first time they saw it and they don't like it any better today. So they are quite happy with the divided Korean peninsula and that's a fundamental difference between the way they see things and the way we see things. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

I don't do carrots. — John Bolton

We need a strong and effective State Department. We can't conduct American affairs in the world without it. — John Bolton

I'm not sure history has ended. — John Bolton

The only way to resolve the North Korean problem is to change the regime. — John Bolton

The Republican Party is the party of national security. There's hardly a national security wing of the Democratic Party anymore. So if we turn away from it, that'll be a big problem. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

I wouldn't give up on Russia. I think they have legitimate security concerns from Islamic fundamentalism, not only on their border but in their country. — John Bolton

You have to negotiate from positions of strength. And right now with Iran, we're not negotiating from a position of strength. The Europeans are negotiating from the position of "Please give up your nuclear weapons program, and by the way if you do we'll give you several boatloads of carrots." The Iranians are quite willing to keep on negotiating on that line for a long time. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

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

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

Iran is barely over 50% Persian, and Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds and many other groups feel left out of the society. That regime has a lot more weaknesses than people see. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

Texas is a big state. It's a major force in the Republican Party. — John Bolton

The press tend to stick with that the people don't care about foreign policy in their daily lives and aren't concerned about it and so on and so forth. I don't think that's actually true. — John Bolton

The European Union can now act like a major power, at least that is what the European Union tells us. — John Bolton

My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have. — John Bolton

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. — John Bolton

Life Lessons by John Bolton

1. John Bolton's work as an American statesman emphasizes the importance of staying true to your convictions and having the courage to stand up for what you believe in, even when it may be unpopular.
2. He also demonstrates the value of having a clear vision and strategy for achieving your goals, and the importance of being willing to negotiate and compromise in order to reach a successful outcome.
3. Lastly, John Bolton's work highlights the importance of having a strong understanding of international affairs and the geopolitical landscape in order to make informed decisions.