Quotes by Joe Biden

It is the most vicious of all crimes -- to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself.

I know why we're strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it's because there's always been a growing middle class.

I was not an activist.

Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive.

I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS. There's no shame in being tested for AIDS. It's an important thing.

Apologized for saying Barack Obama was clean and articulate.

You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan.

America's leaders have to find a way to work together, rise to the challenge, and come up with solutions as bold and visionary as the people of this nation.

US worse off than before Saddam because US lost credibility.

We can say, if you want government money, you have to make this data public -- you have to share it.

Barack and I see a future... where no one, no one is forced to live in the shadows of intolerance.

One of my roles as vice president is to -- is to be an interlocutor with the Senate and the House because everybody up there knows I respect them and I enjoy it. And I have a lot of good friends on both sides of the aisle up there.

When Nixon declared the war on cancer, he had no army. He had no tools. He had no anything, except good intentions.

Al Gore invented the Internet.

The Constitution says the President shall nominate, not maybe he could, maybe he can't, he shall nominate. Implicit in the Constitution is that the Senate will act on its constitutional responsibility and give its advice and consent. No one is required to vote for the nominee.

Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle 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, jobs.

Don't be intimidated by power, wealth or station, character alone makes all the difference.

I've been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that.

I believe the measure of a man isn't just the road he's traveled; it's the choices he's made along the way.

There's no reason the nation of Africa cannot and should not join the ranks of the world's most prosperous nations in the near term, in the decades ahead. There is simply no reason.

I must express my protest against continually increasing the debt without taking positive steps to slow its growth.

I am a Zionist. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.

I wish I had been more mature. I wish I had handled the immediate aftermath of the accident involving my family better.

I believe at its core we have a Constitution, as our Supreme Court's first great justice, Marshall, said in 1819, and I quote, intended to endure for the ages to come and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.

The reason I'm a Democrat is because the essence of the Democratic Party is an abhorrence for the abuse of power on the one hand, and the notion that everyone's entitled to be treated with dignity. That message never got through.

The truth is, my dad was a great driver. I mean, he could handle an automobile. He loved speed. He used to joke that his one regret was he didn't join the volunteer fire service so he could drive the ambulance.

I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.

No Ordinary American Cares About Their Constitutional Rights.

You've all seen over the last eight years what President Obama means to this country. He is the embodiment of honor, resolve, and character -- one of the finest presidents we have ever had.

You know, the eleven million people living in the shadows, I believe, they're already American citizens... These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard alone eleven million undocumented aliens are already Americans in my view.

For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful.

You guys at Fox can't seem to get your facts straight.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

Thus, in setting an American agenda for a New World Order, we must begin with a profound alteration in traditional thought.

Guess what, the cheerleaders in college are the best athletes in college. You think, I'm joking, they're almost all gymnasts, the stuff they do on hard wood, it blows my mind.

Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars. Guess what? Yes we do.

Now that I'm not running, I can appear on Fox. Let the cabinet members do the low-ratings shows on MSNBC.

Based on my own experiences, I made sure, and I'm proud of this, that the Common Core curriculum is hard on plagiarizers.

The Russians appear to be -- appear to be in conjunction with the Turks, as well as the Iranians, appear to be at a point where they are realizing for their interests as well, Assad being in power indefinitely is not in their interests.

Everyone working 40 hrs a week should have a shot at a decent life.

Well, we're USA not looking for an ally; what we're looking for is a stable, democratic government that is not beholden to anyone in the region and is able to be secure within its own borders and have its own policy.

We were never motorheads. We knew fast cars. We knew how to siphon gas -- me -- charge the battery when it was down. But never hot-wired a car.

We US government have no fundamental disagreement with the Saudis -- I mean, excuse me, with the Iraqis any more than we do with the Arab League, which we happen to support the position they're taking.

I've never been called a man of few words.

We take care of those who are grieving, and when that's finished, they should know: We will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice. Because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside.

As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I've said all along ... that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get through, it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president that it might close.

Nothing we're going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting.

John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who.

For a President not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to the myriad of intelligence agencies from defense intelligence, to the CIA, etcetera, is absolutely mindless. It's just mindless.

It's a problem that we USA think the Iranians are backing Hezbollah; the Iranians are backing terrorist activity in many parts of that region.

I don't think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president, and two, they can look at folks out there and say, 'I promise you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion.

To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can't learn at the feet of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down.

The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down.

You never say to a president for certain you wouldn't do anything, but I have no -- look at me now -- I have no desire to sit on the Supreme Court, none. It would be a great honor , but I have no desire, any more than George Mitchell did.

Matter of fact, the way we got a path, a great friend, Arlen Specter, I convinced him to switch parties. Not a joke. Not a joke. He was the deciding vote.

I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid.

I've been saying for the last nine years, our power comes as much from -- our respect in the world comes as much from the exercise of our power as it does from the power of our principles.

People took the word clean out of context. My mother had an expression: clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack. I inherited her originality.

It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair -- giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor decisions reflect, in my view, that our society has worked very hard to improve the workaday world, to open doors to workers confronted by powerful employers and for women facing harassment and stereotypes.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor also brought balance to our highest court; most recently, as been repeated many times, when she cautioned about how war doesn't give a blank check.

War should always be the absolute last resort.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine's economy.

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Romania, American forces have found a devoted NATO ally.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.'