Bill Clinton
Economic expansion and the first balanced federal budget in three decades marked presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, known as Bill, who served forty-second in the United States from 1993 to 2001; the House of Representatives in 1999 impeached him on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, but the Senate acquitted him on both counts.
Born William Jefferson Blythe III, he ranked as the third-youngest president, older only than Theodore Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. People know him the first baby-boomer president at the end of the Cold War. He is the husband of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior senator from New York and a Democratic candidate in the election of 2008 in the United States.
People described Clinton as a New Democrat and knew him largely for the Third Way philosophy of governance that came to epitomize his two terms as president. They described his "centrist" policies on issues, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a reported federal surplus. Clinton reported a surplus of $559 billion at the end of his presidency, based on Congressional accounting rules. His presidency was also quickly challenged. On the heels of a failed attempt at health care reform with a Democratic Congress, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. In his second term he was impeached by the U.S. House for perjury and obstruction of justice, but was subsequently acquitted by the United States Senate and completed his term. Polls of the American electorate taken at this time showed that up to 70% were against pursuing the allegations. (New York Times December 21, 1998).
Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-presidency rating of any President who came into office after World War II. Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes, such as treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released a personal autobiography, My Life.
“When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale.”
“You can put wings on a pig, but that doesn't make it an eagle.”
“..each bloodletting hastens the next, and as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.”
“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.”
“Some day 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.”
“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 are carrying the future of America in your heart and your mind. So live your dreams and remember, whatever you choose to do with your life, you must also be a citizen of your country, your n ation, and our interdependent world. Because while our differences make life more fascinating, our common humanity matters more.”
“If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.”
“We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so; instead, we have drifted. And that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence.”
“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!”
“There is nothing wrong in America that can't be fixed with what is right in America.”
“He [Walter Cronkite] was also a profoundly good man. I don't think we should lose sight of that. All those professional gifts emanated from a very good core and that's something that's beyond training. It's who he was.”
“All America loses when any person is denied or forced out of a job because of sexual orientation. Being gay, the last time I thought about it, seemed to have nothing to do with the ability to read a balance book, fix a broken bone, or change a spark plug.”
“He didn't say a word or do an action that did not have a purpose”
“Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”
“We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.”
“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.”
“A man is more than the sum of all the things he can do.”
“I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts and grandparents told me: that 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.Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story – of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. 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. - Page 15, Paragraph 5, ‘My Life’ by Bill Clinton. –Hard cover version-”
“The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. 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.”
“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.”
“If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.B”
“Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
“from Bill Clinton speech- People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...”
“They should be impressed by the power of our example, not the example of our power.”
“People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”
“When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old.”
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
“We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”