Top 746 Quotes & Sayings by William J. Clinton - Page 2

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

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

In 1979, just after I became governor, I asked Hillary to chair a rural health committee to help expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas. They recommended to do that partly by deploying trained nurse practitioners in places with no doctors to provide primary care they were trained to provide.

I came of age believing that, no matter what happened, I would always be able to support myself.

When I became president with a commitment to reform health care, Hillary was a natural to head the health care task force. You all know we failed because we couldn't break a Senate filibuster. Hillary immediately went to work on solving the problems the bill sought to address one by one.

If you're a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you.

Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try. She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy.

President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. Listen to me now. No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.

When Chelsea was 9 months old, I was defeated for reelection in the Reagan landslide. And I became overnight, I think, the youngest former governor in the history of the country. We only had two-year terms back then.

If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade... a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two-dimensional; they're easy to absorb.

When I was president, I worked hard to give you more peace and shared prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out. But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known.

Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she's spent a lifetime doing it.

The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you examine the evidence.

When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old.

Great rewards will come to those who can live together, learn together, work together, forge new ties that bind together.

Today's possibilities are not tomorrows guarantees.

We must say no to illegal immigration so we can continue to say yes to legal immigration.

You know, by the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. ... You may find you can get away with virtual presidents, virtual prime ministers, virtual everything.

I misled people, including even my wife.

We can't renew America unless more of us, I mean all of us, are willing to join churches.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.

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

Leadership means bringing people together in pursuit of a common cause, developing a plan to achieve it, and staying with it until the goal is achieved.

The Constitution is a radical document... it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights.

Our new immigrants must be part of our one America. After all, they're revitalizing our cities, they're energizing our culture, they're building up our economy. We have a responsibility to make them welcome here, and they have a responsibility to enter the mainstream of American life. That means learning English and learning about our democratic system of government. There are now long waiting lines of immigrants that are trying to do just that. Therefore, our budget significantly expands our efforts to help them meet their responsibility. I hope you will support it.

Sarah, there's a government inside the government, and I don't control it.

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.

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.

Let's create an integrated global community where we have shared benefits and responsibilities, and we don't fight because of our differences.

The most powerful people on earth are focus groups.

If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.

Just because you can't do everything, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can.

Everybody counts, everybody deserves a chance, everybody has a responsible role to play and we all do better when we work together.

Our immigration policy is focussed in four areas: First, strengthening border control; second, protecting American jobs by enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace; third, deporting criminal and deportable aliens; fourth, giving assistance to states who need it, and denying illegal aliens benefits for public services or welfare.

We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.

There is nothing more precious to a parent than a child, and nothing more important to our future than the safety of all our children.

I can spend your money better than you can.

Yesterday is yesterday. If we try to recapture it, we will only lose tomorrow.

Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman

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, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale.

If you want to have a good life you have to have some constructive outlet for your feelings.

Character doesn't matter.

I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortions. We should not spend state funds on abortions because so many people believe abortion is wrong.

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.

In our hearts and in our laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. . . .

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

Behind every great man there stands a great woman. Behind every great woman is a great behind.

Keep your eyes on the prize and don't turn back.

Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.

It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine. First and most important, my family, my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.

That all depends on what "is" is.

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."

The problem with ideology is if you got an ideology, you already got your mind made up, you know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack. The problem with that is that discourages thinking and gives you bad results.

I am trying to be honest with you and it hurts me. Now.

No one can change yesterday, but we can all change tomorrow.

Any president that lies to the American people should have to resign.

Politics gives guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around women. And I hope I never get into that.

So much of modern politics is focused not on honest differences of policy but on personal attacks.