Quotes & Sayings About William Clinton

Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference. — William J. Clinton

Let's adopt some short-term strategies to get growth going and then let's have a long-term debt reduction package. That's what I think we should do and I think it will work. — William J. Clinton

Globalisation is not something that we can hold off or turn off: it is the economic equivalent of a force of nature - like wind or water. — William J. Clinton

I want our nation to take responsibility to make sure that every single child can look out the window in the morning and see a whole community getting up and going to work. We want these young people to know the thrill of the first paycheck, the challenge of starting that first business, the pride in following in a parent's footsteps. — William J. Clinton

Sometimes I feel like a fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs. — William J. Clinton

Most illegal immigrants are not by nature lawbreakers. Most are looking for the chance to live in dignity. Nevertheless we must continue to discourage illegal immigration for it undermines control of our borders ... and even more punishes hard-working people who play by the rules and who wait for their turn to come to the United States. Therefore we must enforce our laws, but we will do so with justice and fairness. — William J. Clinton

I think actually that the speech work I do is fine. It's important, because I try to help people think about what's going on and organize their lives accordingly. — William J. Clinton

Sure enough at Oxford, I was another Yank half a step behind. — William J. Clinton

Turning 50 gives me more yesterdays than tomorrows. — William J. Clinton

There seems to be no mainframe explanation for the PC world in which we're living. — William J. Clinton

Without question, bicycling is an efficient, economical and environmentally sound form of transportation and recreation. Bicycling is a great activity for families, recreational riders and commuters. Hillary, Chelsea and I have bicycles ... — William J. Clinton

One of the things that all kids are taught by their parents is this old "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." — William J. Clinton

I recently spoke with Barbara Jordan of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, and I increasingly believe we need a system to verify employment eligibility. The Commission's recommendation of a national registry may be the way to go. — William J. Clinton

The new energy future is decentralised, entrepreneurial and needs people like you to say 'Give me a clean car, give me solar shingles to put on my roof - give me a clean future' — William J. Clinton

I ask you to join in a re-United States. We need to empower our people so they can take more responsibility for their own lives in a world that is ever smaller, where everyone counts ... We need a new spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together, or the American Dream will continue to wither. Our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every other American. — William J. Clinton

Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits. — William J. Clinton

The light may be fading on the 20th century, but the sun is still rising on America. — William J. Clinton

I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn't have to come at the expense of our economy's bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn't have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both. — William J. Clinton

What really happened in Vietnam was- all these things are away games for the American military. We're not on our home turf, which means to succeed there has to be a partner. And the definition of partnership is someone willing to risk their lives in their home area to prevail because they think it's necessary to build a decent life and a better life for their people. — William J. Clinton

The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow. — William J. Clinton

My fellow Americans, we can only build our bridge to the 21st century if we build it together, and if we're willing to walk arm-in-arm across that bridge together. — William J. Clinton

I might not be the same, but that's not important/No freedom till we're equal, damn right I support it — William J. Clinton

I think what breaks people is not adversity; what breaks people is thinking that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. That's what's numbing - if you think you can't change, you can't be better. And I didn't like that. — William J. Clinton

One of the things that I realized when I left office was that in the 1990's citizens across the world applied more power than they had ever had, as compared with the government, because of more people living under democracies than dictatorships for the first time, the power of the internet, which the young Chinese used to basically change China's policy on the SARS epidemic, and shut it down, and because of the rise in non-governmental organizations like my foundation. — William J. Clinton

You cannot have an integrated world and have your say all the time. America can lead the world towards that, but we cannot dominate and run the world in that direction. There is a big difference. — William J. Clinton

If you take advantage of the fact that technology abolishes distance, then you won't need to go to India. Just go to Indiana. — William J. Clinton

We're going to build the bridge to the 21st century, we have to make our children free - free of the vise grip of guns and gangs and drugs; free to build lives of hope. — William J. Clinton

I believe that people of my income group should pay more, and I explained why, but that won't necessarily lift overall wage levels. — William J. Clinton

The country is groaning and moaning and screaming for change. — William J. Clinton

We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria. — William J. Clinton

A few years back, this guy [Barack Obama] would be serving us coffee. — William J. Clinton

We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values. Technology can help cure diseases, but we can prevent a lot of diseases by old-fashioned changes in behavior. — William J. Clinton

We must work tirelessly to make sure that every boy and girl in America who is up for adoption has a family waiting to reach him or her ... This is a season of miracles, and perhaps there is no greater miracle than finding a loving home for a child who needs one. — William J. Clinton

Let us never forget the greatest untapped market for American enterprise is right here in America, in the inner cities, in the rural areas. — William J. Clinton

My view is there will be problems and bad people as long as the earth exists, and since we're moving into a completely interdependent global environment, we're better off building a world we'd like to live in when the United States are not the only military superpower. That is, we need to build a world of shared responsibility, shared benefits, and shared commitment to our common humanity. — William J. Clinton

Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other. — William J. Clinton

I think if the White House or the President want to say anything about our conversations or anything I tried to do to help our country with their support or at their request, then I think they should be the ones to do that. But I think that former presidents should do that. — William J. Clinton

President Obama is going to have to run against himself. In tough times, nobody can defeat himself. — William J. Clinton

All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. — William J. Clinton

If we disagree and I think I'm right, I just go ahead and do what I think is right. And then she tells me, 'I told you so.' — William J. Clinton

We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray. — William J. Clinton

I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if [Nixon would] go on and resign. [There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense. — William J. Clinton

[Americans know] the traditional values of Islam, devotion to faith and good works, to family and society, are in harmony with the best of American ideals. — William J. Clinton

It takes a long time to turn a big country around. Just be of good cheer and keep working on it. — William J. Clinton

Just try to imagine what it would be like to be 300 million years old. — William J. Clinton

Our policy is guided by the principle that we will keep unauthorized aliens out of the United States, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm. Our solutions rely on working in partnership with States and communities. — William J. Clinton

[Alternative energy] will make us less dependent on foreign oil. It would make us more secure in our future. It would mean that our foreign policy could be a reflection of our values and our other interests, and not just that. — William J. Clinton

We are moving people from welfare to work. On welfare, we launch a quiet revolution. — William J. Clinton

Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up. — William J. Clinton

Let me say this as clearly as I can: No matter how sharp a grievance or how deep a hurt, there is no justification for killing innocents. — William J. Clinton

I have never seen ... so slippery, so disgusting a candidate. — William J. Clinton

Marijuana is ten times more dangerous than twenty years ago. — William J. Clinton

You have to make a conscious decision to change for your own well-being and that of your family and your country. — William J. Clinton

You should have disagreements with your leaders and your colleagues, but if it becomes immediately a question of questioning people's motives, and if immediately you decide that somebody who sees a whole new situation differently than you must be a bad person and somehow twisted inside, we are not going to get very far in forming a more perfect union. — William J. Clinton

I can spend your money better than you can. — William J. Clinton

Hillary's opponent, in his entire campaign, every two or three weeks has said for months and months and months, beginning in Nevada, that really there wasn't much difference in how America did when I was president and how America's done under President Bush. Now, if you believe that, you should probably vote for him, but you get a very bad grade in history. — William J. Clinton

NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good paying American jobs. If I
didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement. — William J. Clinton

From the 12th Congressional District Hopeful William Jefferson Clinton during the Nixon investigations.
I wanted to share some information I've turned up regarding two of your Clinton quotes. — Keith Richards

In the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything. — William J. Clinton

I wanted to continue to be active on those things that I cared about when I was president where I could still have an impact. — William J. Clinton

We will reduce the White House staff by 25 percent — William J. Clinton

I mean my life was a combination of fascination with other people, with politics, and with policy, and the impact of government decisions on people's lives and the life of our nation and the life of the world. — William J. Clinton

We need to be creating a world that we would like to live in when we're not the biggest power on the block. — William J. Clinton

Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas
to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation. — William J. Clinton

Keep your eyes on the prize and don't turn back. — William J. Clinton

The most ethical administration in the history of the Republic. — William J. Clinton

It's the economy, stupid. — William J. Clinton

Music, to me, was - is - representative of everything I like most in life. It's beautiful and fun, but very rigorous. If you wanted to be good you had to work like crazy. It was a real relationship between effort and reward. My musical life experiences were just as important to me, in terms of forming my development, as my political experiences or my academic life. — William J. Clinton

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year. — William J. Clinton

America just works better when more people have a chance to live their dreams. — William J. Clinton

People should really take care when they vote, and pay more attention to what people say they're going to do - instead of just how they feel about how things are going. — William J. Clinton

If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather. — William J. Clinton

What are the needs of the world? What can I do that won't be done if I don't do it? — William J. Clinton

Constant conflict is actually often good politics, because the more you can inflame your supporters the more likely they are to show up at Election Day. And if they're more inflamed than the other side, even if the other side has more people agreeing with it, you'll win, because your crowd will show up. — William J. Clinton

If you wanted to create jobs in a way that has minimal effect on the deficit but has government action, the two best things you could do are the infrastructure bank and a simple SBA-like loan guarantee for all building retrofits, where the contractor or the energy-service company guarantees the savings. So that allows the bank to loan money to let a school or a college or a hospital or a museum or a commercial building unencumbered by debt to loan it on terms that are longer, so you can pay it back only from your utility savings. You could create a million jobs doing that. — William J. Clinton

We passed welfare reform. All of you know I believe we were right to do it. — William J. Clinton

My plan after office is to get up and spend that entire first day helping my wife move into her new senatorial office. — William J. Clinton

If you live long enough, uyou'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.
By William J. Clinton — Laura McClure

First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible. — William J. Clinton

Success is not the measure of a man but a triumph over those who choose to hold him back. — William J. Clinton

It is inconceivable that anyone could say we have tried to hide anything — William J. Clinton

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities. — William J. Clinton

If we were being attached by space aliens, we wouldn't be playing these kinds of games. — William J. Clinton

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted. — William J. Clinton

This is one way that wealthy Americans could really contribute. They could put hundreds of millions of dollars into the infrastructure bank, be a good investment for them, for their children, for their grandchildren, and they would directly contribute to revitalizing a big sector of middle-class wages in America and making our country more productive, so that we could create more opportunity. But I think that we could get a lot of grassroots support from, like, local chambers of commerce and other things if they understood exactly how this infrastructure bank would work. — William J. Clinton

The great thing about this game is that the bad days are wonderful. — William J. Clinton

In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. — William J. Clinton

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities. — William J. Clinton

Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. — William J. Clinton

No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit. — William J. Clinton

Israel's democracy is the bedrock on which our relationship stands. It's a shining example for people around the world who are on the frontline of the struggle for democracy in their own lands. Our relationship is also based on our common interest in a more stable and peaceful Middle East, a Middle East that will finally accord Israel the recognition and acceptance that its people have yearned for so long and have been too long denied, a Middle East that will know greater democracy for all its peoples. — William J. Clinton

When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. — William J. Clinton

If you want to be forgiven, you have to extend forgiveness, even to people who aren't smart enough to ask for it. — William J. Clinton

You can put wings on a pig, but you don't make it an eagle. — William J. Clinton

The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization. — Lyndon LaRouche

Every time Bush talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system. — William J. Clinton

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America's commitment to excellence. — William J. Clinton

When it comes to anything that's social, whether it's your family, your school, your community, your business or your country, winning is a team sport. — William J. Clinton

Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless. — William J. Clinton

If, two people have good minds and they're looking at problems, if they agree all the time it means one of them is not thinking. If they disagree all the time, it means one of them is not thinking. They're just allowing their political position to dictate their position on an issue. And I think that's unhealthy. And the public knows better. — William J. Clinton