Bill Clinton Quotes
“We should, all of us, be filled with gratitude and humility for our present progress and prosperity. We should be filled with awe and joy at what lies over the horizon. And we should be filled with absolute determination to make the most of it.”
“I like that about the Republicans; the evidence does not faze them, they are not bothered at all by the facts.”
“Success is not the measure of a man but a triumph over those who choose to hold him back.”
“By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well.”
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America”
“We need not just a new generation of leadership but a new gender of leadership”
“Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology.”
“The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth”
“Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.”
“The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists.”
(discussing the balanced budget amendment) Obviously I don`t support it, but I support the impulses that are giving rise to it.
(1996) Will you help me build a bridge to the 21st century?
You know, (George Bush) is always comparing me to (Elvis Presley) in sort of unflattering ways. I don`t think Bush would have liked Elvis very much, and that`s just another thing that`s wrong with him.
When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page.
What`s the sacrifice that`s being asked of people who make more than $1 million per year? It`s the energy they have to expend opening the envelopes containing their tax cuts."
(to British TV interviewer David Dimbleby after Dimbleby persisted in questioning him about the Monica Lewinsky incident) Look how much time you spent asking me these questions. And that`s why people like you always help the far right because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings. Look - you made a decision to allocate your time in a certain way. You should take responsibility for that. You should say "Yes, I care much more about this (the Lewinsky affair) than whether the Bosnian people were saved, than whether 27 million people had jobs at the end, and whether we moved a hundred times as many people out of poverty as (Ronald Reagan) and George W. Bush]." This is what I care about."
(in 1992, responding to a question about whether he ever smoked pot) I didn`t inhale.
That`s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying (to kill Osama Bin Laden). They had eight months (before September 11th) to try; they did not try.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
In some ways she (Hillary Rodham Clinton) would be better because of what we did together. First, she has the Senate experience I didn`t have. Second, she would have had the eight years in the White House. I think she wouldn`t make as many mistakes because, you know, we`re older and more mature, and she is far more experienced now in all the relevant ways than I was when I took office. So I think in a way she has the best of both worlds.
(2 October 2002 at the UK Labour Party Conference) It`s good to be in a place where our crowd are still in office.
The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry.
The divide of race has been America`s constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become.
Running helps me stay on an even keel and in an optimistic frame of mind.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
