Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

Maybe it`s legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven`t paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.

It was a superb agreement to end a war, but a very bad agreement to make a state. From now on, we have to part company with Dayton and try to build a modern democratic state, for which I have tried to lay the foundations.

My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals` broad agreement with what I do.

Politics is compromise.

It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them.

This country is about history, and unless the Serbs in particular come to some understanding of this history, we cannot build a stable state.

We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.

The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

Bosnia is under my skin. It`s the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war.

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

I love this country, I love these people, though I can`t say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold.

I don`t think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

We are not there yet, but I`d be disappointed if in two years` time there was not some movement towards truth as a precursor to reconciliation.

I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war.

It would be a foolish high representative who worked that way.

I`ve had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.

I can create institutions, but I can`t rewrite the chips in people`s heads.

I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.

It`s not my job to be popular. I`m goal-driven; my job is to get results.

My first job has been to do the best thing for the Bosnian people. Not for the Serbs, the Bosniaks or Croats, but the people as a whole.

I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.

I shall go home now. You have to know when your time is up. I knew that with the Liberal Democrats, and I know that now, in Bosnia.

People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt.

What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.