William J. Clinton famous quotes

If you live long enough, you'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.
-- William J. Clinton

#Inspirational #Perseverance #Attitude

We have a moral obligation to make sure the people who are being required to work have the opportunity to work. We must make sure the jobs are there.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Opportunity #People

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.
-- William J. Clinton

#Party #Believe #Thinking

A parent may be without a job, but no child should be without a doctor.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Children #Doctors

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.
-- William J. Clinton

#Peace #Real #Past

We respect the individual conscience of every American on the painful issue of abortion, but believe as a matter of law that this decision should be left to a woman, her conscience, her doctor and her God. But abortion should not only be be safe and legal, it should be rare.
-- William J. Clinton

#Believe #Law #Issues

When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be good, but what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation.
-- William J. Clinton

#Hurt #Real #People

Nothing in our lifetimes has been more heartening than when people of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe broke the grip of communism. We have aided their progress and I am proud of it.
-- William J. Clinton

#Europe #People #Progress

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats.
-- William J. Clinton

#Hate #Party #President

Our bridge to the future must include bridges to other nations, because we remain the world's indispensable nation to advance prosperity, peace and freedom and to keep our own children safe from the dangers of terror and weapons of mass destruction.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #Bridges #World

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
-- William J. Clinton

#Memorial Day #Freedom #America

We should make it a crime even to attempt to pollute. Our children should grow up next to parks, not poison.
-- William J. Clinton

#Growing Up #Children #Parks

I tried ***** once. I did not inhale.
-- William J. Clinton

#Funny #Marijuana #Drug

We cannot become the world's policeman, but where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must act and we must lead. That is our job and we are better, stronger and safer because we are doing it.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Differences #Making A Difference

We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #Patriotic #Presidential

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

#Bridges #Together #Arms

Character is a journey, not a destination.
-- William J. Clinton

#Inspirational #Character #Journey

In our own country, we have seen America pay a terrible price for any form of discrimination. And we have seen us grow stronger as we have steadily let more and more of our hatreds and our fears go, as we have given more and more of our people the chance to live their dreams. That is why the flame of our Statue of Liberty, like the Olympic flame carried all across America by thousands of citizen heroes, will always burn brighter than the fires that burn our churches, our synagogues, our mosques, always.
-- William J. Clinton

#Dream #Country #Hero

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

#Strength #Strength And Wisdom #Values

When I started out in public life there used to be a saying we'd hear from time to time, that every man who runs for public office will claim that he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Well, my mother knew better. And she made sure I did too.
-- William J. Clinton

#Mother #Running #Men

Let us all take more responsibility, not only for ourselves and our families but for our communities and our country.
-- William J. Clinton

#Success #Country #Encouragement

Drugs nearly killed my brother when he was a young man and I hate them. He fought back. And I'm really proud of him. But I learned something in going through that long nightmare with our family. And I can tell you, something has happened to some of our young people. They simply don't think these drugs are dangerous anymore. Or they think the risk is acceptable.
-- William J. Clinton

#Brother #Hate #Men

If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #Military #Opportunity

One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.
-- William J. Clinton

#Ethos #Iraq #Lines

I am in support of the NRA position on gun control.
-- William J. Clinton

#Gun #Support #Nra

The Information Age is, first and foremost, an education age, in which education must start at birth and continue throughout a lifetime. Last year, from this podium, I said that education has to be our highest priority. I have something to say to every family listening to us tonight: Your children can go on to college.... Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of America.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #School #College

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

#Morning #Children #Responsibility

We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.
-- William J. Clinton

#Future #Helping Others #Making A Difference

We should stay on the right track to the 21st century. Opportunity alone is not enough. I want to build an America in the 21st century in which all Americans take personal responsibility for themselves, their families, their communities and their country.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #Responsibility #Opportunity

Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.
-- William J. Clinton

#Independent #Self Worth #People

Every tax cut I call for is targeted, it's responsible and it is paid for within my balanced budget plan. My tax cuts will not undermine our economy. They will speed economic growth.
-- William J. Clinton

#Cutting #Growth #Speed

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities - a 'we're all in it together' society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #Responsibility #Opportunity

You know what higher interest rates mean. To you it means a higher mortgage payment, a higher car payment, a higher credit card payment. To our economy it means businesspeople will not borrow as much money, invest as much money, create as many new jobs, create as much wealth, raise as many raises.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Mean #Car

We need a spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together. If we have no sense of community, the American dream will wither.
-- William J. Clinton

#Dream #Community #Presidential

I want to help communities put welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools, making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again. There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these families.
-- William J. Clinton

#School #Cities #People

When we make college more affordable, we make the American dream more achievable.
-- William J. Clinton

#Dream #Knowledge #College

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

#Cities #America #Rural Areas

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.
-- William J. Clinton

#Cat #Patriotic #High Heels

I challenge every business person in America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system to try to hire somebody off welfare. And try hard.
-- William J. Clinton

#America #Challenges #Trying

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

#Motivational #Business #Self Improvement

I want to build a bridge to the 21st century that ends the permanent underclass, that lifts up the poor and ends their isolation, their exile, and they are not forgotten anymore.
-- William J. Clinton

#Bridges #Want #Isolation

If we want to invest in the prosperity of our nation, we must invest in the education of our children so that their talents may be fully employed.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #May #Want

You can't be involved in modern American politics without somebody attacking you.
-- William J. Clinton

#Modern #Attacking

Cooperation will save the future. And America should lead it. Every time humanity has been in danger of extinguishing itself, our consciousness and our conscience have led us to come together. That's the big issue of the 21st century.
-- William J. Clinton

#America #Issues #Humanity

We're [Clinton Foundation] trying to get rapid tests that give you results when you're right there on site at an affordable price. Ninety percent of the HIV-positive people in the world don't know they have the infection. An enormous amount of infections are being perpetrated by people who don't know they themselves are HIV positive.
-- William J. Clinton

#Giving #People #Trying

I think the Republicans and conservatives generally were alienated by America's unsuccessful effort in Vietnam, and a lot of them, as Henry Kissinger admitted the other day, never got over President Nixon's impeachment, and didn't think, even though there was a pattern of illegal conduct there, sanctioned by the White House and proved by the tapes and other documentary evidence and testimony, they didn't believe that the impeachment was justified, and they didn't think he should have resigned.
-- William J. Clinton

#Believe #Thinking #White

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

#Mean #Thinking #Two

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.
-- William J. Clinton

#America #President #Would Be

So we, Democrats, have a responsibility there, every one of us, both to try to treat the Republicans with respect and as human beings to try to work with them on every issue we can, and then if those cannons are fired at us, we've got to stand up and fight back. If you lay down and you look like a deer caught in the headlights, then you will confirm the assault. And so we have to fight back.
-- William J. Clinton

#Responsibility #Fighting #Issues

If you go against someone, you say, you can't vote for these Democrats, they don't have good values, they're not good people, they're weak, they're spineless, they're don't love America, they're giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein, that's the kind of thing I think is bad for America, because it stops the voters from thinking. And any time you stop thinking in a free society you get in trouble.
-- William J. Clinton

#Thinking #America #Giving

When I was in office I expressed admiration and respect and even affection for Republicans that I knew and liked and cared about, and I tried to find ways to work with them. I think the Democrats should do that, and just keep trying to lower the temperature.
-- William J. Clinton

#Thinking #Office #Trying

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

#Epidemics #Government #Organization

I figured if I could get really good people who were going to be able to have a big impact in the world over the next decade to come together once a year for ten years and actually sign a pledge to take action themselves, if we did that every year for ten years we could do a lot of good in the world. That's the difference between my meeting and any other. If you don't want to promise to do something, don't come to my meeting, stay home.
-- William J. Clinton

#Home #Years #Differences

When I first came to Washington in the 1960s, even at the height of the Vietnam War, until the end there in '68 there was a certain climate of cooperation. And then in the late sixties and in through the seventies, politics began getting more mean. And then from the eighties on it seemed to be institutionalized, this personal attack business. And I just hate it.
-- William J. Clinton

#War #Hate #Mean

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

#Country #Thinking #White

But the truth is, countries have to do what is best in each instance to pursue both their interest and their values.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #Truth Is #Interest

It's important that the American people understand that President has proposed and passed this stimulus plan not as the end-all and be-all to our economic woes but as our bridge over troubled water until we get the finance system, the banking system working again.
-- William J. Clinton

#Bridges #Water #People

The risk is that as we come out of this recession, we'll have so much debt to finance, we'll either have to have inflation or very high interest rates to continue to borrow the money, or both. That's a risk.
-- William J. Clinton

#Risk #Debt #Finance

The stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters. And if it's invested well, it'll generate a lot of economic growth, and we'll get quite a bit of the revenues back.
-- William J. Clinton

#Bridges #Water #Growth

If you look at what's happened to the stock market, if you look at what's happened to housing values, if you look at what's happened to bank loan portfolios because the value of their other assets that they've already issued loans against were going down, there was a pretty good argument for trying to pass something at about this level of investment with the divisions as they were - unemployment, food stamps, and tax cuts, aid to education and healthcare, and job creation.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Cutting #Trying

People ought to be going over this, finding things they don't like. Congress has clearly proved they can act in a hurry. If there's something wrong with it, it can be amended. If something needs to be kicked in, it can be put in. If something needs to be taken out, it can be taken out.
-- William J. Clinton

#Taken #People #Needs

It's the biggest public health problem in America, the rising rates of obesity among our young people and very heavy statistics among our adult population.
-- William J. Clinton

#America #People #Population

I did a lot of work on energy efficiency at the White House. By the time I left we had taken the equivalent of six hundred cars a year off the road in reduced greenhouse gas emissions just in the White House complex.
-- William J. Clinton

#Taken #Years #White

The Kyoto Treaty wasn't perfect, but we signed it, in fact, helped to draft it. And I'm very proud of it, it was the world's first commitment to doing something comprehensive on greenhouse gases and trying to reduce global warming before we do irreversible damage to many civilizations around the world.
-- William J. Clinton

#Commitment #Civilization #Kyoto

Food is a big bargain in America, and you can go to these places, we all like them, and you get big portions, and they taste good. But they're higher in fat than ever before. And same thing has happened, by the way, though, to school menus. A lot of school lunch menus have more fat and more sugar than ever before.
-- William J. Clinton

#School #Lunch #America

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

#Believe #People #Income

Americans - not just starting thirty years ago but going back to the beginning, when we were rebelling against King George - we've always been of two minds about the government, which is why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did.
-- William J. Clinton

#Kings #Government #Years

Putin wants to reestablish Russian greatness, not as the Cold War, but in 19th century empire terms.
-- William J. Clinton

#War #Greatness #Want

The conservative Republican governors tend to be more oriented toward trying to work with Democrats and getting things done.
-- William J. Clinton

#Trying #Done #Conservative

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

#People #Attention #Care

The good news is you can get a lot of information off the Internet for free and in a hurry. But I think the breaking up of the media, which is otherwise kind of healthy, has contributed to less actual reporting and a louder, more contentious, more divisive public discourse, highlighting conflict, sometimes falsely.
-- William J. Clinton

#Thinking #Media #Healthy

I think we need to push harder, we the Democrats, because it's an open door for the Republicans - prosperity centers.
-- William J. Clinton

#Thinking #Doors #Needs

One of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that what works in politics is organization and conflict. That is, drawing the sharp distinctions. But in real life, what works is networks and cooperation. And we need victories in real life, so we've got to get back to networks and cooperation, not just conflict. But politics has always been about conflict, and in the coverage of politics, information dissemination tends to be organized around conflict as well.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #Real #Organization

If you are focusing your anger at government, you are focusing your anger at all of us. Government is just a personification of this country.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #Government #Personification

I love the book signings, you know, because I get to talk to real people, and a staggering number of people have said something very specific to me. "The Family Leave Law saved my family," or "Made our lives better," or, "The education aid that you provided made it possible for me to go to college." One man at 50 years of age got his college degree.
-- William J. Clinton

#Real #Book #College

I liked working with Republicans. We had five pretty good years after we had that bad year in '95 that culminated in two government shutdowns. But then they really decided that they liked being in the majority for the first time in forty years, and they wanted to get some things done, and I agreed, to get things I wanted. It was all perfectly transparent. Everybody knew what they wanted and what I wanted.
-- William J. Clinton

#Government #Years #Two

You don't have to be an elected official to be a public servant.
-- William J. Clinton

#Servant #Elected Officials

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

#Country #Children #Opportunity

I've been talking about income inequality in America for twenty years, and when I was president, people didn't pay much attention to it, probably because wages were going up. But I don't think I've given a single solitary speech since I left office that I hadn't talked about it. It's a problem around the world and within the United States. So these people have put that on the agenda.
-- William J. Clinton

#Thinking #Talking #Years

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

#Jobs #School #Simple

The United States is too big and we are too involved with too many people for any president to be able to take actions that will be universally agreed to all day, every day and everywhere in the world.
-- William J. Clinton

#People #President #World

If you wanna maintain 20 percent of the world's income with 4 percent of the world's people, you gotta first of all have more shared prosperity and shared growth.
-- William J. Clinton

#People #Growth #Income

I believe we can do much more to adapt to the structural changes in the global economy, get high-end manufacturing back here, set up clusters of economic activity where you have, among other things, continuous retraining of people well into their middle years so they never become irrelevant to the current job market.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Believe #Years

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

#Distance #Technology #Needs

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

#Adversity #Thinking #Yesterday

When I was president, I knew exactly what I wanted to do every day to bring America together and create a greater sense of opportunity and a larger sense of responsibility and a stronger sense of community.
-- William J. Clinton

#Responsibility #Opportunity #America

There is no example on the planet of a successful economy with broadly shared prosperity and a shrinking, weak government.
-- William J. Clinton

#Successful #Government #Example

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

#Mean #Government #Impact

When you're president, the Democrats got to feel good when they walk in the door if you're a Republican; if you're a Democrat, the Republican has to feel like you're listening. And you should be listening.
-- William J. Clinton

#Doors #Feel Good #Listening

We are on the right track to the 21st century. We are on the right track, but our work is not finished. What should we do? First, let us consider how to proceed. I say the question is no longer, "Who's to blame?" but "What to do?"
-- William J. Clinton

#Track #Firsts #Blame

Our country [America] is still the strongest force for peace and freedom on earth.
-- William J. Clinton

#Country #America #Earth

I saw my job [as president] as to try to move the world from an unstable condition of interdependence toward more integrated cooperative world community. Therefore, my approach was to cooperate wherever possible and to build institutions of cooperation, an expanded NATO, the World Trade Organization, the Summit of the Americas, the Asian Pacific Leaders, all those, the coalition to fight in Bosnia and Kosovo, to cooperate wherever possible but to act alone if we had to.
-- William J. Clinton

#Jobs #Moving #Fighting

We [United States] are the only military superpower. We have no idea how long this is going to last, so we ought to get every bad guy we can and fix every problem we can.
-- William J. Clinton

#Military #Ideas #Long

We set forth on a journey to bring our vision to our country, to keep the American dream alive for all who are willing to work for it, to make our American community stronger, to keep America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity.
-- William J. Clinton

#Dream #Country #Journey

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

#Moving #People #Revolution

I love and revere the rich and proud history of America. And I am determined to take our best traditions into the future. But with all respect, we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.
-- William J. Clinton

#Past #Bridges #America

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

#Military #Moving #Commitment

I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we create a strong and growing economy to preserve the legacy of opportunity for the next generation by balancing our budget in a way that protects our values and ensuring that every family will be able to own and protect the value of their most important asset, their home.
-- William J. Clinton

#Strong #Home #Opportunity

I could never allow [tax] cuts that devastate education for our children, that pollute our environment, that end the guarantee of health care for those who are served under Medicaid, that end our duty or violate our duty to our parents through Medicare. I just couldn't do that. As long as I'm president, I'll never let it happen.
-- William J. Clinton

#Children #Cutting #Long

I think the idea of moving to a cleaner energy future and doing more energy efficiency makes smart sense.
-- William J. Clinton

#Smart #Moving #Thinking