Famous
115 Bill Clinton Quotes on Knowledge, Philosophy, and Wisdom
Bill Clinton Quotes: The importance of maintaining meaningful relationships with others is emphasized throughout this selection of quotes attributed to former President Bill Clinton. We’ve taken some of his most memorable quotes from interviews, speeches, and articles that he’s written and compiled them into this list. Make it a point to read some of the books written by the 42nd President of the United States, who is also the author of titles such as Between Hope and History, Back to Work, and The President is Missing. He has some invaluable advice to offer.
Have Any of These Quotes from Bill Clinton Inspired You to Share Your Life with Others? Bill Clinton was a skilled storyteller, and he was a firm believer that everyone has their own story to tell and their own story to live out. He also believed that everyone should tell their own stories. As president of his country, he never forgot the promise he made to put an end to the discrimination that had become pervasive throughout his country. And despite the fact that a great number of people may have voiced their disapproval of his administration, he maintained his ability to inspire hope. He never stopped showing respect for other people, and he always encouraged others to let the stories of their lives unfold naturally. This is primarily what people remember former President Bill Clinton for today. Which of these quotations do you find most meaningful and why? Do you know of any other Bill Clinton quotes that you’d like us to add to this article?
1. “Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle.” — Bill Clinton
2. “If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.” — Bill Clinton
3. “We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.” — Bill Clinton
4. “Respectful arguments are a waste of time.” — Bill Clinton
5. “The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today.” — Bill Clinton
6. “I think about where I’m going—the person I’m about to see—and invariably my mind wanders back.” — Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton Quotes
7. “A whole host of functions that were once performed without the internet now can only be performed with the internet. There is no fallback.” — Bill Clinton
8. “The media knows what sells—conflict and division.” — Bill Clinton
9. “In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic, but not ideological. There’s a big difference.” — Bill Clinton
10. “Look happy, they tell you. Happiness, they say, is the optimal emotion to project when under surveillance, the least likely to arouse suspicion.” — Bill Clinton
11. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” — Bill Clinton
12. “One thing they never tell you about this job is how much it’s like your first roller-coaster ride—thrilling highs, lows lower than a snake’s belly.” — Bill Clinton
13. “What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far—widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us.” — Bill Clinton
14. “We pursue activities, both positive and negative, that we hope will lift us beyond the chains of ordinary existence and perhaps endure after we are gone.” — Bill Clinton
15. “If the stakes are high, you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn. It’s the job you promised to do.” — Bill Clinton
16. “A lot of your life is shaped by the opportunities you turn down as much as those you take up.” — Bill Clinton
17. “I’d never known intimacy so raw and cathartic.” — Bill Clinton
18. “I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.” — Bill Clinton
19. “The advancements of mankind can make us more powerful and yet more vulnerable at the same time.” — Bill Clinton
20. “Gerald Ford once said that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is.” — Bill Clinton
21. “You can think whatever you want, Mr. Speaker, but you should show respect—if not for me, then for all the other people who dedicate their lives to stopping terrorism and keeping our country safe. We aren’t perfect, and we never will be. But we will never stop doing our best.” — Bill Clinton
22. “The greater the power, the greater the vulnerability.” — Bill Clinton
23. “We live in a completely interdependent world, which simply means we can not escape each other.” — Bill Clinton
24. “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” — Bill Clinton
25. “I’m out of rabbits and hats to pull them out of.” — Bill Clinton
26. “I learned that everyone has a story—of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness.” — Bill Clinton
27. “Mankind is predictable.” — Bill Clinton
28. “If there is nothing else to learn from history, it’s that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led. Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.” — Bill Clinton
29. “In America, racism is our oldest curse. But there are other divides—over religion, immigration, sexual identity.” — Bill Clinton
30. “And you hear me, you unelected flunky. I only take orders from the President.” — Bill Clinton
31. “And now she’s a parasite, living off her host. If he makes a mistake, she made the mistake.” — Bill Clinton
32. “Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery—there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.” — Bill Clinton
33. “You can put wings on a pig, but that doesn’t make it an eagle.” — Bill Clinton
34. “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.” — Bill Clinton
35. “And to the memory of my grandfather, who taught me to look up to people others looked down on, because we’re not so different after all.” — Bill Clinton
36. “We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical.” — Bill Clinton
37. “This is a practical country. We have ideals, we have philosophies. But the problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence.” — Bill Clinton
38. “We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations.” — Bill Clinton
39. “Just as the women in this book were empowered by the efforts and example of those who came before them, a new generation will be inspired and encouraged by the spirit and achievements of this remarkable group.” — Bill Clinton
40. “According to Becker, as we grow up, at some point we become aware of death; then the fact that people we know and love die, then the fact that someday we, too, will die. Most of us do what we can to avoid it.” — Bill Clinton
41. “Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.” — Bill Clinton
42. “But with no incentive to actually accomplish something, more and more politicians just go with the flow, fanning the flames of anger and resentment, when they should be acting as the fire brigade.” — Bill Clinton
43. “Character is a journey, not a destination.” — Bill Clinton
44. “We all do better when we work together.” — Bill Clinton
45. “When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old.” — Bill Clinton
46. “The idea that power was an end in itself, rather than a means to provide the security and opportunity necessary for the pursuit of happiness, seemed to him stupid and self-defeating.” — Bill Clinton
47. “It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you.” — Bill Clinton
48. “They intended to use America’s absence from the world scene to overthrow the Saudi king, expropriate the wealth of his branch of the royal family and its supporters, reconcile with Iran and Syria, and establish a modern technocratic caliphate using science and technology to raise the standing of the Muslim world to heights not seen in a thousand years.” — Bill Clinton
49. “The built-up molehills also have large benefits—increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder.” — Bill Clinton
50. “Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias.” — Bill Clinton
51. “Leaving no one behind, left out, looked down on—we must get back to that mission. And do it with both energy and humility, knowing that our time is fleeting and our power is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve more noble and necessary ends.” — Bill Clinton
52. “Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.” — Bill Clinton
53. “Each bloodletting hastens the next, and as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.” — Bill Clinton
54. “There is nothing I value more in subordinates than their willingness to tell me I’m wrong, to challenge me, to sharpen my decision making.” — Bill Clinton
55. “May God bless the United States of America and all who call it home.” — Bill Clinton
56. “The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists.” — Bill Clinton
57. “The first two times you heard me speak, I sounded like a fool. I made about as much sense as a top hat on a mule. I wasn’t sure a third attempt would do me any better, so I decided that I’d put my thoughts down in a letter.” — Bill Clinton
58. “That boy’s so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom.” — Bill Clinton
59. “Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment.” — Bill Clinton
60. “If you possess the absolute truth, those who disagree are by definition wrong, and evidence of success or failure is irrelevant.” — Bill Clinton
61. “Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world, but the engine of our own renewal.” — Bill Clinton
62. “Today, it’s ‘us versus them’ in America.” — Bill Clinton
63. “Foot forward, weight forward, stop and listen.” — Bill Clinton
64. “The anti-government paradigm blinds us to possibilities that lie outside its ideological litmus tests and prevents us from creating new networks of cooperation that can restore economic growth, bring economic opportunity to more people and places, and increase our ability to lead the world to a better future.” — Bill Clinton
65. “Our society has become completely reliant on technology.” — Bill Clinton
66. “Psychologically, we’re all a complex mixture of hopes and fears.” — Bill Clinton
67. “Her eyes drift up and away, enlarging them—a beautiful copper color. It makes her look even younger. Less of the hardened image she’s trying to project and more the scared kid she must be, underneath it all.” — Bill Clinton
68. “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.” — Bill Clinton
69. “You are carrying the future of America in your heart and your mind.” — Bill Clinton
70. “Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.” — Bill Clinton
71. “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” — Bill Clinton
72. “If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person.” — Bill Clinton
73. “He likes to wear bow ties so we’ll all know how intelligent he is. Personally, I’ve seen Post-it notes with more depth.” — Bill Clinton
74. “It is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.” — Bill Clinton
75. “Do as much as you can for as many as you can, every day.” — Bill Clinton
76. “Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.” — Bill Clinton
77. “After being married for nearly thirty years and observing my friends’ experiences with separations, reconciliations, and divorces, I’ve learned that marriage, with all its magic and misery, its contentments and disappointments, remains a mystery, not easy for those in it to understand and largely inaccessible to outsiders.” — Bill Clinton
78. “Freedom is difficult, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep the people in.” — Bill Clinton
79. “People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power.” — Bill Clinton
80. “His knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace.” — Bill Clinton
81. “Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.” — Bill Clinton
82. “The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences, and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for.” — Bill Clinton
83. “Savagery in the quest for power is older than the Bible, but some of my opponents really hate my guts.” — Bill Clinton
84. “Even on the bad days, there’s always something good you can do.” — Bill Clinton
85. “Governments mistreat people—their own people and others. They always have, and they always will. So the people react. There is action and reaction. This is how history has progressed and how it always will.” — Bill Clinton
86. “Live your dreams and remember—whatever you choose to do with your life, you must also be a citizen of your country, your nation, and our interdependent world.” — Bill Clinton
87. “I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how prepared you are, there are few defenses that work against predators. At some point, there’s nothing you can do but jump in and fight back.” — Bill Clinton
88. “That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the more perfect union.” — Bill Clinton
89. “Everybody knows it’s wrong, but the immediate rewards are so great we stagger on, just assuming that our Constitution, our public institutions, and the rule of law can endure each new assault without doing permanent damage to our freedoms and way of life.” — Bill Clinton
90. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” — Bill Clinton
91. “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” — Bill Clinton
92. “Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control.” — Bill Clinton
93. “The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.” — Bill Clinton
94. “All too often, anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence.” — Bill Clinton
95. “All my life, I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to people a chance to have better stories.” — Bill Clinton
96. “No one is perfect, but most people are good; that people can’t be judged by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain.” — Bill Clinton
97. “The accomplishments of the women in ‘The Counselors’ are a testament to the power and promise of the American Dream and are sure to resonate deeply with many young women who have the desire and the ability to make their own unique contributions to this legacy of progress.” — Bill Clinton
98. “There is nothing to learn from the experience of other countries.” — Bill Clinton
99. “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.” — Bill Clinton
100. “A man is more than the sum of all the things he can do.” — Bill Clinton
101. “Politics is little more than blood sport.” — Bill Clinton
102. “I stroke the hair of my brilliant, strong, independent girl. She is a woman now, with her mother’s beauty and brains and spirit, but she will always be the little girl who lit up when she saw me, who squealed when I’d bombard her with kisses, who couldn’t fall back asleep after a nightmare unless Daddy held her hand.” — Bill Clinton
103. “Sometimes the ‘them’ strategy is just a narcotic to feed the beast in all of us.” — Bill Clinton
104. “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.” — Bill Clinton
105. “Someday, we hope to liberate every man on earth from the tendency as old as human history to identify our strength and manhood with the ability to control the lives, limit the chances, and doom the dreams of women and girls.” — Bill Clinton
106. “Each day, we wake up with the scales tipping a bit one way or the other. If they go too far toward hopefulness, we can become naive and unrealistic. If the scales tilt too far the other way, we can get consumed by paranoia and hatred.” — Bill Clinton
107. “I have been assaulted by cleverness on all fronts.” — Bill Clinton
108. “Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!” — Bill Clinton
109. “‘Mourn your losses later, after the fight’s over,’ Sergeant Melton used to say. When you’re in the fight, fight.” — Bill Clinton
110. “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!” — Bill Clinton
111. “Meanwhile, in ways we understand only dimly, if at all, we embrace identities and the illusion of self-sufficiency.” — Bill Clinton
112. “Today, the changes are happening so fast in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged.” — Bill Clinton
113. “Anybody who tries to make you mad and stop you from thinking is not your friend. There’s a lot to be said for thinking.” — Bill Clinton
114. “There is a reason that the founders of our country put a civilian in charge of the military. Because it is not only about military effectiveness. It’s also about policy, about values, about what we stand for as a nation.” — Bill Clinton
115. “She always said, ‘You boys aren’t rich enough to afford not to pay attention.’” — Bill Clinton
Read More:
You may like
-
150 Best True Love Quotes for Him and Her That’ll Remain in Our Hearts Forever
-
56 Inspiring Life Quotes That Will Change You (Forever)
-
42 Religious Christian Good Morning Messages and Christian Greetings
-
50 Inspirational Quotes for Women on Strength and Leadership – Best Quotes
-
42 Cute Good Morning Text for Husband, Quotes and Images
-
80 Calvin and Hobbes Quotes
Recent Posts
- 45 Inspirational Strategy Quotes to Inspire You
- 45 Inspirational Good Person Quotes to Inspire You
- 140+ Birthday Wishes For Brother – Happy Birthday Brother
- 45 Inspirational Quotes about wealth and money to Success
- 45 Inspirational Quotes about dreams to Inspire You
- 35 Good Morning Quotes For Friends, Wishes Messages With Images
- 45 Inspirational Quotes about Challenges to Inspire for Strength
- 45 Happy Mother’s Day Quotes For Your Mom
- 145+ Encouragement Quotes With Images
- 80 Bff Quotes On Friendship with Your Best Friends
- Top 55 Inspirational Quotes on Life From the Dalai Lama
- 145 Best Deep Meaningful Quotes With Images
- 45 Inspirational Quotes Every Business Person Needs to Read
- 150 Best True Love Quotes for Him and Her That’ll Remain in Our Hearts Forever
- 45 Inspirational Good Morning Quotes with Beautiful Images
- 60 Really Cute Good Morning Quotes for Her & Morning Love Messages
- 35 Good Morning Quotes with Beautiful Images
- 45 Best Positive Quotes About Life Inspirational Sayings
- 150 Depression Quotes About Anxiety And Depression Sayings
- 60 Positive Quotes For The Day
Trending
-
Positive Quotes5 months ago
45 Stay Positive Quotes Moving Forward To Inspire
-
Good Morning3 weeks ago
60 Really Cute Good Morning Quotes for Her & Morning Love Messages
-
Life4 years ago
56 Good Morning Inspirational Quotes With Beautiful Images
-
Inspirational Quotes4 years ago
147 Uplifting Short Inspirational Quotes & Positive Words With Images To Inspiring
-
Positive Quotes4 years ago
38 Short Positive Quotes – Motivational Quotes of the Day
-
Birthday Wishes7 months ago
144 Happy Birthday Wishes And Happy Birthday Funny Sayings
-
Funny4 years ago
76 Funny Quotes To Make You Laugh, Short Funny Sayings And Quotations
-
Inspirational Quotes4 years ago
56 Short Inspirational Quotes And Short Inspirational Sayings