William J. Clinton Quotes

Edgar Wayburn has worked to preserve the most breath-taking examples of the American landscape. In fact, over the course of more than a half-century, both as President of the Sierra Club and as a private citizen, he has saved more of our wilderness than any person alive.

Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes.

We will reduce the White House staff by 25 percent

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.

The greatest progress we have made, and the greatest progress we have yet to make, is in the human heart. In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.

I don't like to use the word sacrifice.

I'm sure I spent more time in Texas than anybody else who had run for President recently.

Shakespeare wrote, Einstein thought, Ataturk built.

After years of denial and deception, the Philip Morris company has admitted that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. This formal acknowledgment comes far too late but still we must all welcome it. It can be the beginning of clearing the air.

I think it's very important, and I think that what young people will learn from my experience is that even presidents have to do that and there are consequences when you don't. But I also think that there will be a box score, and there will be that one negative, and then there will be the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when the record will show that I did not abuse my authority as president, that I was truthful with the American people.

Even if it takes changing the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.

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

We have a chance here to prove that [Rwanda], a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence, can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive, quality health care with minimal outside help.

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.

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.

$100,000 donors buy access to Congress and the White House. We believe it's long past time to clean up Washington.

African Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do.

If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream really is alive and well again, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and justice and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you have to vote for Barack Obama.

You live in a country that makes it harder to raise children than any other country in the world. You vote for me and I'll give you family values.

We simply have to transition from an economy based almost exclusively on oil and coal and natural gas to one that's far more diversified, that uses solar energy, and wind energy, and the power of the tides, and bio-mass energy, and eventually, develops hydrogen.

This is a good deal for the United States, north Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States and international inspectors will carefully monitor North Korea to make sure it keeps its commitments. ...Only as it does, so will North Korea fully join the community of nations.

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

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.

...the fact [is] that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience.

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.

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.

In a world with no systems, with chaos, everything becomes a guerilla struggle, and this predictability is not there. And it becomes almost impossible to save lives, educate kids, develop economies, whatever.

America can no longer afford to get the Nobel Prizes while our competitors get the profits.

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

I issued a number of denials to people I thought needed to hear them

I got a letter from 13-year-old Ryan from Belfast. Now, Ryan, if you're out in the crowd tonight, here's the answer to your question. No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. And, Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it, either, and I want to know.

During the sole argument we had when [Chelsea] was in high school, the subject of which I don't even remember, I looked at her and said, 'As long as you're in this house, being president is my second most important job'.

The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart.

I'm sorry, could you please tell me what the definition of the word "is" is?

I believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace, we are on the verge of a global economic expansion that is sparked by the fact that the United States at this critical moment decided that we would compete, not retreat.

Citizen service is the very American idea that we meet our challenges not as isolated individuals but as members of a true community, with all of us working together. Our mission is nothing less than to spark a renewed sense of obligation, a new sense of duty, a new season of service.

41, you look great. Love what you're doing.

North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy.

Our land of new promise will be a nation that meets its obligations, a nation that balances its budget, but never loses the balance of its values.

A lot of wonderful people love their country and hate the military.

I'm someone who had a deep emotional attachment to 'Starsky and Hutch.'

From the small clubs of the Harlem Renaissance where he began playing saxophone to world tours for the biggest of the big bands, Benny Carter redefined American jazz. From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the sax was amazing. They say that about me, too. (Laughter.) But I don't think they mean it in quite the same way.

Marijuana is ten times more dangerous than twenty years ago.

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.

Effort, not ability, makes the biggest difference in achievement.

Through scientific discovery and technological innovation, we enlist the forces of the natural world to solve many of the uniquely human problems we face - feeding and providing energy to agrowing population, improving human health, taking responsibility for protecting the environment and the global ecosystem, and ensuring our own Nation's security. Scientific discoveries inspire and enrich us, teaching us about the mysteries of life and the nature of the world.

Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.

If you look back at the 1960's in the United States, and if you think that more good was done than harm, you are probably a Democrat. If you think that more harm was done than good, then you're probably a Republican.