221 Inspiring Quotes by Joe Biden

I consider myself to be as informed on American foreign policy as anyone in America.

We're going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget -- to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

If you need more than 10 rounds to hunt, and some argue they hunt with that many rounds, you shouldn't be hunting. If you can't get the deer in 3 shots, you shouldn't be hunting. You are an embarrassment.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

Let's just be smart this time. I'm looking for smart.

Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here's what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.

The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand.

Given a fair shot, given a fair chance, Americans have never, ever, ever, ever let their country down. Never. Never. Ordinary people like us. Who do extraordinary things.

One of the things I've never been accused of is not caring about people.

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn't be playing football.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

Corruption is just another form of tyranny.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It's because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand -- demand -- demand change.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it.

The American people have not become heartless.

ISIS is not an existential threat to something happening to someone in the United States of America. It's a serious problem overseas, but it's confusing and frightening.

In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking.

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America. Let's get that straight. She's a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be President of the United States of America. She's easily qualified to be Vice President of the United States of America.

In the middle of a recession, where we're just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

In this world, emotion has become suspect -- the accepted style is smooth, antiseptic and passionless.

I've been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed -- the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Crossroads of Civilization, and, I might add, a genuine strategic partner to the United States of America.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.

I support immediate financial assistance to the newly elected Palestinian president. Now, I don't know what those numbers will be, and I don't know how it's going to be framed.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

The Middle East is hopeful. There's hope there.

This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidize, we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.

Just talk to me as a father -- not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest -- with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

The Recovery Act is working, but it's going to continue to work. It's not over. A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer, there's more to come with the act.

Over the objections, where they sound like squealing pigs, over the objections of Romney and all his allies, we passed some of the toughest Wall Street regulations in history, turning Wall Street back into the allocator of capital it always has been and no longer a casino. And they want to repeal it.

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.

You're looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

I'm not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that's not me.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.

America doesn't have health insurance.

Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that either the Democratic or Republican party has produced at least since I've been around. He's fresh, he's new, he's insightful.

Remember, no one decides who they're going to vote for based on the vice president. I mean that literally.

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator -- just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.

The American public's a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I'm going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I'm going to do it.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.

In my neighborhood, when you've got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?

If you're in a confined aircraft; when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft.

You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!

Folks, you're the reason that the automobile industry is back. Whether it was the wage freezes, the plant closures, folks, you sacrificed to keep your companies open. Because of your productivity, the combined auto companies have committed to invest another $23 billion in expansion in America.

Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the -- he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules -- unchain Wall Street. They're gonna put y'all back in chains.

'Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.' Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That's not a tax raise. That's called fairness where I come from.

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it's cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that's the realm in which we should be playing.

I've known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

I have a really close relationship with Mike Bloomberg.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

I have 'Parents' magazine in my home.

When you go to your local police officer, your police chief in the town you live in, big or small, he will tell you the vast majority of the weapons recovered at a crime scene are either stolen weapons, and or they have been 'lost' or stolen.

The only thing I know is I ain't changing my brand. I know what I believe. I'm confident in what I know. And I'm gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don't like it, I understand.

I love that Cadillac ATS!

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it's not so much a good joke anymore. 'Everybody's from Scranton; no one's in Scranton.'

Folks, I can tell you I've known eight presidents, three of them intimately.

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.

My dad used to have an expression -- 'It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.'

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it's funny. And it's not funny. It's not.

If I don't run for president, we'll all be OK.

Two million felons have tried to buy a gun and, because of the background check, have been denied.

Global energy security is a vital part of America's national security.

I have no doubt that Russia will and should remain a major source of energy supplies for Europe and the world.

Romania can be a linchpin in delivering gas to its neighbors and even become an energy exporter for its neighbors across Central and Eastern Europe.

I don't say very much I don't really think through. I know that sounds inconsistent with Joe Biden.

The Qataris have cut off support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations.

Don't hold against me that I don't own -- that I don't own a single stock or bond. Don't hold it -- I have no savings accounts.

We Americans think, in every country in transition, there's a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.

It's overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure, democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel.

A diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran's nuclear program represents the best and most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, the entire Middle East will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

In Romania, American forces have found a devoted NATO ally.

I have an expression I use as I've gone around the world through my career: 'You never tell another man or woman what's in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.'

In the 21st century, the countries that thrive will be the ones where citizens know their voices will be heard because the institutions are transparent.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

No nation should stoke instability in its neighbor's country.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

We can, we will, and we must come together.

America's experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It's about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

I've been a strong supporter of public financing my whole career. I'm the first guy to introduce a public financing bill to the United States Senate in 1973.

Somalis have made my city of Wilmington, Delaware, their home on a smaller scale. There is a large, very identifiable Somali community.

Some of my best friends are Jewish contributors to the Democratic Party.

As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the "capital of the free world." But it seems to me that Brussels, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.

We are Boston. We are America. We respond. We endure. We overcome. And we own the finish line.

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine's economy.

Every other country where there's absolute chaos now, what is it? They're pluralistic without consensus. Look at almost every single country, from Syria, to Iraq, to Iran, Ukraine, no matter where it is. I just think it is totally counter to our tradition.

There's less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with.

The number one job facing the middle class. And it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S.

Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.

I did not know at the time, but what I did at that swimming pool on the east side of Wilmington paved the way for Barack Obama.

I worked at an all-black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, I was involved in what the Negroes, I mean, blacks were thinking, what they were feeling.

But people turn on their televisions. They turn on their televisions and they see what's happening in Iraq. The American people are not stupid. And the one thing they understand, they understand how incredibly mismanaged and bungled this war has been by the civilians in this administration. And -- I mean, you can't paper over that, any more than you can paper over Katrina.

One role of government is to go where venture capital won't.

The single biggest stimulus to the economy are the unemployment benefits we're paying. These people go out and they spend the money. They go out and they have to get by to everything from paying their mortgage or buying food or just getting by. It has a significant impact on economic growth and the continuation of economic growth.

It's easy being vice president -- you don't have to do anything.

There's never been A day in the last four years I've been proud to be his Vice President. Not a single day.

I had a great deal of trouble focusing. My two -- I had three children, and the two that survived -- boys -- were very badly injured. I did my job. I didn't miss the votes. I showed up. But I just could hardly wait to get home.

The Constitution provides for one democratic moment, Judge, before a lifetime of judicial independence, when the people of the United States are entitled to know as much as we can about the person that we're about to entrust with safeguarding our future and the future of our kids.

Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.

I always judge people who spend a lot of time in public office say they care about things, if the day after they leave, they no longer talk about them, then I don't think they cared much about them.

You know whether you have a real relationship with the president when you know it's real.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor brought critical qualities to the high court that not everybody thinks are qualities -- I happen to think they are -- her pragmatism and her state craft.

Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.

President Clinton bankrupted Chrysler so that Italians could buy it to ship jobs overseas to China.

When I said clean, I meant he Barack Obama was bright. Like when Donald Trump said about Carly Fiorina, "face" he meant "persona.

The worst thing we can do as a nation is taking the easy way out. If you start opening up offshore drilling, then you are buying time and you are not addressing the fundamental problem with fossil fuels.

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that.

I've learned a long time ago, you don't say anything for absolutely certain.

The idea that you know more than the intelligence community knows, it's a little like saying, I know more about physics than my professor.

A lucky person gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they're about to do and thinks it still matters.

Hillary Clinton, income inequality, it's richest damn woman next to the Kennedy family, and you're trying to tell me she cares about income inequality?

We also wanted to change the story -- change the approach to the 21st century on energy, on education, on transportation, on infrastructure, generally, and it laid the groundwork for that. And one of the reasons I'm doing this trip is not only to say what we did worked, but to say we should do more of this.

Mr. Trump's a good man, but he doesn't know much about the health care system.

There will come a day, I promise you, when the thought of your son, or daughter, or your wife or your husband, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner than later.

The truth of the matter is there is significant debate among judicial scholars today as to whether or not we've gone off on the wrong path with regard to Supreme Court decisions.

What's four years in our long American history? Remember when I asked that wheelchair-bound politician to "stand up." It turns me off when people say Donald Trump is authentic. Just because he says "Mexican rapists." What about me? I am the real deal.

If we wait for the danger to become clear, it could be too late.

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man.

We have a Bill of Rights, we have trial by jury. We have a notion that you are -- you're innocent until you're proven guilty. We have all these things.

I used to stand in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I shared a bedroom -- like a lot of people in my era, in my neighborhood -- with my two brothers and an uncle. And I'd stand there in front of the mirror over the dresser and I would practice: meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views of Cicero, Bacon and Baba.

There is no question that I would be the better president. But as for the campaign, are Americans ready for a general election in which both major party candidates are ADD? Quite frankly, it could provide an opening for a third party candidate, maybe someone backed by the evil Koch brothers.

Resist the temptation to ascribe motive, because you really don't know -- and it gets in the way of being able to reach a consensus on things that matter to you and to many other people.

I was angry. I was kind of looking for a fight. I didn't want to talk to you guys in the press, because initially, understandably, all they wanted to talk to me about was, you know, what does it feel like?

Stop talking about how you care about people. Show me something. Show me a policy. Show me a policy where you take responsibility.

A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It's the civil rights of our day. It's the issue of our day.

It's amazing to me that no matter what city, what state, no matter where I am, a woman will come up to me and say "Thank you, thank you" for writing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which funds services for victims and pushes to put more assailants behind bars.

Mike Dukakis? He's the salt of the earth.