Top 746 Quotes & Sayings by William J. Clinton - Page 3

I've been in politics long enough to expect criticism and hostility. But I was unprepared for the hatred I get from Christians. Why do Christians hate so much?.

The secret to living a full life with no regrets and to staying young is to figure out what you believe in and fight for it. If you lose, don't give up. If you win, raise the bar, and then rare back and do something else. And remember that, with the accumulation of years, our responsibilities to the future grow greater, not less.

Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology.

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.

I believe that a worthwhile life is defined by a kind of spiritual journey and a sense of obligation.

I admire that about the Republicans: The evidence does not faze them. They are not bothered at all by the facts.

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.

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.

Sometimes there is a difference in what is legal and what ought to be done.

New information and communications technologies can improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, but only if such technologies are designed from the beginning so that everyone can use them. Given the explosive growth in the use of the World Wide Web for publishing, electronic commerce, lifelong learning and the delivery of government services, it is vital that the Web be accessible to everyone.

You can't say you love your country and hate your government.

Being President is a little like being the grounds-keeper at a cemetery: there's plenty of people below you but no one's listening.

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.

We know that when we protect our oceans we're protecting our future.

...More important than the deficit, more important then healthcare-more important than anything-we have got to do something about our energy strategy. Because if we permit the climate to continue to warm at an unsustainable rate, and if we keep on doing what we're doing until we're out of oil and we haven't made the transition, then it's inconceivable to me that our children and grandchildren will be able to maintain the American way of life and that the world won't be much fuller of resource-based wars of all kinds.

On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse.

Sometimes I feel like the fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs.

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.

My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we'll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take-all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we're-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

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

NASA even sent Chuck Berry's music on a space probe searching for intelligent life in outer space. Well, now, if they're out there, they're duck walking

Islam is one of the fastest-growing faiths within America, and America needs to show that we're not anti-Islam. We are for, for people being free and having opportunity everywhere, that... We did that in Bosnia, we did that in Kosovo, we did that in numerous other places in the world.

It is a commonplace of American life that immigrants have made our country great and continue to make a very important contribution to the fabric of American life. But...under the pressures we face today, we can't afford to lose control of our borders, or to take on new financial burdens, at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care, and the education of our own people. Therefore, immigration must be a priority for this administration.

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.

Undeniably, character does count for our citizens, out communities, and our Nation, and this week we celebrate the importance of character in our individual lives... core ethical values of trustworthiness, fairness, responsibility, caring, respect, and citizenship form the foundation of our democracy, our economy, and our society... Instilling sound character in our children is essential to maintaining the strength of our Nation into the 21st century.

Four years ago nobody but nuclear physicists had ever heard of the Internet. Today even my cat, Socks, has his own web page. I'm amazed at that. I meet kids all the time, been talking to my cat on the Internet.

America's greatness depends on the ability of its citizens to make the most of their lives. Americans with disabilities are an enormous, often untapped reservoir of that potential.

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.

Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.

With almost no time to decide, they [your loved ones] gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the capitol from attack. They saved God knows how many lives. They saved the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government. And they did it as citizens. They allowed us to survive as a country that could fight terror and still maintain liberty and still welcome people from all over the world from every religion and race and culture as long as they shared our values, because ­ordinary people given no time at all to decide did the right thing.

I've gained first hand knowledge of the challenges faced by people with disabilities. It's made me understand that those of us who have full use of our physical faculties owe an enormous amount of respect and sensitivity to people who don't.

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.

Every American should have above average income, and my Administration is going to see they get it.

I want to say to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could bring religion into our public life and into our private life without any of us telling the other what to do.

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.

I always get nervous when people start talking about legacies.

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.

More people can be great leaders than think they can, but they need a purpose greater than themselves.

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.

Just as war is freedom's cost, disagreement is freedom's privilege.

It might suprise you to know I think I raised them too much, too

I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her.

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.

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

Taxing less and spending more.. it's fun in the short run, but it's a recipe for disaster.

Nobody is right all the time and even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Turning 50 gives me more yesterdays than tomorrows.

Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.

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.

We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.

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.

[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.

On Bill Clinton: I have a simple question: Who's the last President to give you a balanced budget?

We are very frustrated because we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to say that the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us. For example, they say you couldn't stop me from spending all the money I've saved over the last five years on Hillary's campaign if I wanted to, even though it would clearly violate the spirit of campaign finance reform.

Our Nation owes a lasting debt of gratitude to all those selfless members of our Armed Forces who have risked their own freedom and safety to defend the the lives and liberty of others.

I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, it's like telling the American people or half the American people that don't agree with you they're all fools. That's just not true.

Thanks to the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have a government for the Information Age, once again a government that is a progressive instrument of the common good, rooted in our oldest values of opportunity, responsibility and community, devoted to fiscal responsibility, determined to give our people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives in the 21st century, a 21st century government for 21st century America.

The first thing you ought to do when you find yourself in a hole is quit digging. . . . Instead they are looking for a bigger shovel.

We [Democrats] have got to be strong. When we look weak in a time where people feel insecure, we lose. when people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right.

Our relationship would never vary from its allegiance to the shared values, the shared religious heritage, the shared democratic politics which have made the relationship between the United States and Israel a special-even on occasion a wonderful-relationship ... The United States admires Israel for all that it has overcome and for all that it has accomplished. We are proud of the strong bond we have forged with Israel, based on our shared values and ideals. That unique relationship will endure just as Israel has endured.