John F. Kelly

“The people that work the border will tell you that physical barriers, backed up by men and women, is what we need to secure the southwest border.”

“I grew up in Boston in a very, very, very Marine town. So back in my neighborhood in Boston, a working-class neighborhood, when you got your draft notice, you went down, and you took your draft physical. And then, if you passed it, you joined the Marine Corps.”

“I work for one man. His name is Donald Trump. He has told me one thing: 'Secure the border.'”

“If you want to get into the United States, the best way, I believe, is to ride the network. There is no convergence between, say, the criminal networks and the Islamic extremist networks.”

“If the Marines today are doing exactly the same thing their dads did in Vietnam and their granddads did in Korea and World War II, then how in the hell can we say that they're not as good?”

“I guess, over time, I had convinced myself that I could imagine what it would be like to lose a son or daughter. You try to imagine it so that you can write the right kind of letters or form the right words to try to comfort. But you can't even come close. It is unimaginable.”

“My fear was of being offered a job that would be kind of a full-time position at a veterans organization or even in the government... I'd prefer to not be that, to come up the Beltway every day.”

“I'm pretty committed to the Constitution.”

“I've learned that, in many cases, people say, 'I want ground truth,' and they don't really mean it. There are warts all over this organization, as there are in many organizations, but you just have to tell truth to power and let the chips fall where they may.”

“If there's a country, and it's dangerous, and we deploy a U.S. military man or woman, if there's only one there, and they never leave the capital, that is 'boots on the ground.' We do a disservice to the sacrifice of these people, particularly if they are killed, when we say there's no boots on the ground.”

“To lose a child is - I can't imagine anything worse than that.”

“I'm not for the mass collection of data. I go the other way.”

“One day, you'll get out of the Marine Corps; you'll put your uniform up, but you'll never not be a Marine.”

“To join in the political fray, I don't think it convinces anyone. It just becomes a talking point on CNN.”

“We cannot gamble with American lives. I will not gamble with American lives.”

“Unless confronted by an immediate, visible, or uncomfortable crisis, our nation's tendency is to take the security of the Western Hemisphere for granted.”