Bill Clinton Quotes

Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.

In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. There's a big difference. You can have a philosophy that tends to be liberal or conservative but still be open to evidence, experience, and argument. That enables people with honest differences to find practical, principled compromise. On the other hand, fervent insistence on an ideology makes evidence, experience, and arguments irrelevant: If you possess the absolute truth, those who disagree are by definition wrong, and evidence of success or failure is irrelevant. There is nothing to learn from the experience of other countries. Respectful arguments are a waste of time. Compromise is weakness. And if your policies fail, you don't abandon them; instead, you double down, asserting that they would have worked if only they had been carried to their logical extreme.

You can put wings on a pig, but that doesn't make it an eagle.

We live in a completely interdependent world, which simply means we can not escape each other. How we respond to AIDS depends, in part, on whether we understand this interdependence. It is not someone else's problem. This is everybody's problem.

The media knows what sells — conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.

..each bloodletting hastens the next, and as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.

If one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you’d better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope!

They should be impressed by the power of our example, not the example of our power.

If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person.

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

When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale.

When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old.

Gerald Ford once said that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is.

That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us — moving toward the “more perfect union.

He didn't say a word or do an action that did not have a purpose