Welcome to our collection of quotes by Bill Clinton. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992, and as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton became known as a New Democrat, as many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the husband of Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas and attended Georgetown University. He received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, and he later graduated from Yale Law School. He met Hillary Rodham at Yale; they married in 1975. After graduating from law school, Clinton returned to Arkansas and won election as state attorney general, followed by two non-consecutive terms as Arkansas governor. As governor, he overhauled the state's education system and served as chairman of the National Governors Association. Clinton was elected president in the 1992 presidential election, defeating incumbent Republican president George Bush and independent businessman Ross Perot. At 46 years old, Clinton became the third-youngest president of the United States.
Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, but failed to pass his plan for national health care reform. In the 1994 elections, the Republican Party won unified control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. In 1996, however, he was reelected in a landslide. During this time Clinton began an ideological evolution as he became much more conservative in his domestic policy advocating for welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, as well as financial deregulation measures. He also appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the U.S. Supreme Court. During the last three years of Clinton's presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus—the first such surplus since 1969. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, signed the Dayton Peace agreement, signed the Iraq Liberation Act in opposition to Saddam Hussein, participated in the Oslo I Accord and Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and assisted the Northern Ireland peace process.
Clinton's second term would be dominated by the Monica Lewinsky scandal which began in 1996, when Clinton began a sexual affair with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In January 1998, news of the sexual relationship made tabloid headlines. The scandal escalated throughout the year, culminating on December 19 when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, becoming the second U.S. president to be impeached after Andrew Johnson. The two impeachment articles that the house passed were based on Clinton using the powers of the presidency to obstruct the investigation and that Clinton lied under oath. The following year saw the impeachment trial begin in the Senate, but Clinton was acquitted on both charges as the Senate failed to cast 67 votes against him, the conviction threshold.
Clinton left office with the highest end-of-term approval rating of any U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt. His presidency has been ranked among the upper tier in historical rankings of U.S. presidents. However, his personal conduct and allegations of sexual assault against him have made him the subject of substantial scrutiny. Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2009, he was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton and George W. Bush formed the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. He has remained active in Democratic Party politics, campaigning in his wife's 2008 presidential campaign and 2016 presidential campaign. He endorsed Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.
I think I did something for the worst possible reason -- just because I could.
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Being president is a lot like running a cemetery. You've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening.
Dream big and chase your dreams--hold on to optimism--even in failure, amazing things will happen.
If something makes you cry, you have to do something about it. That's the difference between politics and guilt.
The best social program is a good job.
I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life.
We need to reform our job training programs, especially our unemployment system, and transform it into a reemployment system.
You don't have to wait till your party's in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world.
People really don't care if politicians attack each other with untrue stories. They figure if you don't want to get hurt, you shouldn't have filed for office. They figure whatever happens to us, our lives will be better than theirs.
If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person.
Longer Version:
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.
America just works better when more people have a chance to live their dreams.
In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love -- Republicans just fall in line.
A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.
His knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace.
Obama doesn't know how to be President. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur!
That depends on what your definition of 'is' is.
They should be impressed by the power of our example, not the example of our power.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
I don't know whether the White House is the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the American penal system.
People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power.
When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old.
We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.
I felt like a pickle stepping into history.
We must say no to illegal immigration so we can continue to say yes to legal immigration.
Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she's spent a lifetime doing it.
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.
We want to live forever, and we're getting there.
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.
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.
I refuse to be part of a generation that celebrates the death of communism abroad with the loss of the American dream at home.
What we believe in is what works.
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.
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 believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor of nondiscrimination.
If you believe in the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family. And we're proud to be with you.
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.
The future belongs to those who are creative collaborators.
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.
It is now conceivable that our children's children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars.
I'm very proud that the first bill I had the opportunity to sign into law as President was the Family and Medical Leave Act No parent should ever have to choose between work and family; between earning a decent wage and caring for a child.
We must all be profoundly grateful for the magnificent achievements of our forbearers in this century. Yet perhaps in the daily press of events, in the clash of controversy, we don't see our own time for what it truly is -- a new dawn for America.
The light may be fading on the 20th century, but the sun is still rising on America.
We need not just a new generation of leadership but a new gender of leadership.
We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.
The earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems.
I am fascinated by this partnership between Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett. It's magic and I love it.
She got to go to heaven four days early.
Noting his mother's visit to Las Vegas the weekend before she died. She got to go to heaven four days early.
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.
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.
Let me be clear: we are still a nation of immigrants, and we honor all those immigrants who are working hard to become new citizens.
No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit.
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.
All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them.
The fact is that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience.
India.. a perfectly wonderful country, may have been motivated by a lack of self-esteem.
Sure enough at Oxford, I was another Yank half a step behind.
I never thought of political endeavors primarily in terms of power and prestige, and I never thought of economic endeavors primarily in terms of wealth and position.
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.
If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.
Taxing less and spending more.. it's fun in the short run, but it's a recipe for disaster.
Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a relentless, questioning, hopeful people.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, and the security of the world.
Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.
By the end of the first month of the 1995 session, each senator will have made more money than any person who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage for the entire year.
Hope I lived up to my reputation for being slick.
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.
You can't blame the administration and the Republicans for taking us back to deficits, for spending the Social Security surplus and assaulting the environment. That's what they promised to do in the last election.
I personally don't believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending, either one, until we get this economy off the ground. I'll pay more, but it won't solve the problem.
Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We -- the American people -- we are the solution.
I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a long-term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.
I'm Bill Clinton and I think you deserve a change. That's why I've offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut.
Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.
Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.
When, President Bush asks me to go with his father to the Tsunami impacted areas and help raise money, I was thrilled to do that, because I think we have to always keep looking for common ground.
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.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
Only astrophysicists new about the Internet 20 years ago. Today my cat has a website.
We are moving people from welfare to work. On welfare, we launch a quiet revolution.
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?.
A lot of wonderful people love their country and hate the military.
Yesterday is yesterday. If we try to recapture it, we will only lose tomorrow.
You can't be involved in modern American politics without somebody attacking you.
Just as war is freedom's cost, disagreement is freedom's privilege.
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.
On Bill Clinton: I have a simple question: Who's the last President to give you a balanced budget?