William J. Clinton People Quotations

Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11. Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive.

Today’s generation of young people holds more power than any generation before it to make a positive impact on the world.

Volunteering is an act of heroism on a grand scale. And it matters profoundly. It does more than help people beat the odds; it changes the odds.

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.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and love it and those who have not seen the Taj and love it.

These dilemmas present perhaps the most enduring conundrum of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?

A preemptive action today, however well-justified, may come back with unwelcome consequences in the future. And because … I've done this. I've ordered these kinds of actions — I don't care how precise your bombs and your weapons are, when you set them off, innocent people will die.

The most powerful people on earth are focus groups.

The most important question of the 21st century is not what or how much, it is 'How?' How do you propose to turn your good ideas into positive changes in other people's lives? You must be the 'how generation.'

There's a big conservative press unabashedly and for the Democrats and even people to the left of the Democratic party, there's almost virtually no outlets that you can compare with the vast array of conservative press that's out there.

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

The American people have now spoken, but it's going to take a little while to determine what they've said.

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.

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.

If no one consumes these products, people will stop producing them. They will not build it if you don't come.

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

He was a martyr of peace but was the victim of hate. If people can't let go of the hatred of their enemies they risk sowing the seeds of hate among themselves.

Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent.

The other thing we have to do is to take seriously the role in this problem of . . . older men who prey on underage women. . . . There are consequences to decisions and . . . one way or the other, people always wind up being held accountable.

The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the Declaration of Independence says.

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.

Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We, the American people, we are the solution.

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.

When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.

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.

Together, people with good hearts and fine minds can move the world.

[George Bush] has raised taxes on the people driving pickup trucks and lowered taxes on the people riding in limousines. We can do better.

In the emerging global economy, everything is mobile: capital, factories, even entire industries. The only resource that's really rooted in a nation--and the ultimate source of all its wealth--is its people.

All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them.

Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a relentless, questioning, hopeful people.

Progress changes consciousness, and when people's consciousness changes, then their awareness of what is possible changes as well - a virtuous circle.

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.

You should have disagreements with your leaders and your colleagues, but if it becomes immediately a question of questioning people's motives, and if immediately you decide that somebody who sees a whole new situation differently than you must be a bad person and somehow twisted inside, we are not going to get very far in forming a more perfect union.

Millions of people of color still experience racism daily.

Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11. Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive.

Because primarily of the power of the Internet, people of modest means can band together and amass vast sums of money that can change the world for some public good if they all agree.

Some people say well we need a change. Hillary Clinton is been around a long, she sure has, and she's sure been worth every single year she's put into making people's lives better.

When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20%. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true.

All of us have to do a better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by the words other people use against them.

I believe that people of my income group should pay more, and I explained why, but that won't necessarily lift overall wage levels.

You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.

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.

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

It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt.

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.

We should not let our response to the people who disagree with us be dictated by what they say about us or even how they treat people we care for. There has to be a chance that we can find love.

We need to help younger people recognize their own capacity to do good, and help them discover the rewards of generosity.

What we need to do is to have a sensible approach to immigration. It needs to be open. It needs to be non-dogmatic and non-bigoted. We need to be firm but reasonable in the way we deal with the problem of illegal immigration. And we need to try to get as many of our immigrants who want to do so to become citizens as quickly as possible so that the American people will all see that this is a part of the process of American history, which is a good one for our country.

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; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.

The era of big government is over, but the era of big challenge is not. We need an era of big citizenship. There are many important people at this summit, but the most important title is 'citizen.' This is our republic. Let us keep it!

Everybody has a gas-guzzling car because people like SUVs. They would like SUVs if they were hybrid vehicles that had the same horsepower and used less gasoline. Instead, what the auto manufacturers are doing is building SUVs that are hybrid vehicles that use the same amount of gasoline because they up the horsepower. That's a decision that they make to market irresponsible economic behavior. The American people like the SUVs, they have kids, they, they need them, they get around in them, but we have options.

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.

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.

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

The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.

Don't you ever forget that in the end, our future is tied to people.

I always get nervous when people start talking about legacies.

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.

There is no longer a clear, bright line dividing America's domestic concerns and America's foreign policy concerns...If we want America to stay on the right track, if we want other people to be on that track and have the chance to enjoy peace and prosperity, we have no choice but to try to lead the train.

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.

from Bill Clinton speech- People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.

We can't afford to lose control of our own 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.

[Illegal immigration] costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money. And it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants.

It's good for young people to be angry about something.

I hate it when people blame someone else and don't take responsibility.

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.

Fanatics are defined by their hatreds; free people by their humanity.

We are a people of faith. We have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our Constitution protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us for doing so. That is what the First Amendment is all about.

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.

The purpose of politics is to give people tools to make the most of their lives.

We find as our interdependence increases that, on the whole, we do better when other people do better as well.

At the dawn of the 21st century, a free people must now choose to shape the forces of the Information Age and the global society, to unleash the limitless potential of all our people, and yes, to form a more perfect union.

I want the ability to monitor high-tech communications among far-flung terrorists. I want to be able to have our people learn their plans before they strike. That's the key.

In our efforts to battle terrorism and cyber attacks and biological weapons, all of us must be extremely aggressive. We must protect our people from danger and keep America safe and free.

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.

When people think, Democrats win.

Health care's complicated, can be misrepresented, it's personal, it can spark fear, it's expensive, and the people who have got the money want to keep it.

In speaking powerfully and eloquently for mercy and reconciliation to people divided by old hatreds and persecuted by abuse of power, the Holy Father was a beacon of light not just for Catholics, but for all people.

People will vote for someone who [they perceive] is strong and wrong before they will vote for someone who appears weak but is right.

We have no intention of abandoning the American people to unproven theories and extreme positions. We're the people party and we're going to stick up for the people.

People like change in general, but not in particular.

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.

If you want to be forgiven, you have to extend forgiveness, even to people who aren't smart enough to ask for it.

The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.

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.

Politics is for people who are too ugly to get into showbusiness.

Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.

Today, I want to talk about Social Security and how all of us can ensure that one of the greatest achievements of this century continues to serve our people well into the next. . . . For 60 years, Social Security has meant more than an ID number on a tax form; more than a monthly check in the mail. It reflects our deepest values - our respect fr our parents and our belief that all Americans deserve to retire with dignity.

The new energy future is decentralised, entrepreneurial and needs people like you to say 'Give me a clean car, give me solar shingles to put on my roof - give me a clean future'

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.

The people have spoken, but it will take a while to determine exactly what they said.

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.

There are always going to be people who want to be president, and some days I'd like to give it to them.

There are a lot of very brilliant people who believe that the nation-state is fast becoming a relic of the past,

If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people he should resign.

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.

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.

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.

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.