Top 500 William J. Clinton Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

402. “Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That’s true.”

— William J. Clinton

403. “Fanatics are defined by their hatreds; free people by their humanity.”

— William J. Clinton

404. “The conservative Republican governors tend to be more oriented toward trying to work with Democrats and getting things done.”

— William J. Clinton

405. “I experimented with marijuana a time or two.”

— William J. Clinton

406. “A great democracy doesn’t make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.”

— William J. Clinton

407. “In addition I had real and serious questions about an independent counsel investigation that began with private business dealings twenty years ago.”

— William J. Clinton

408. “You can’t blame your opponents for applying a strategy that beats your brains out with regularity.”

— William J. Clinton

409. “Anyone can want something; it’s those who believe in their goals that achieve.”

— William J. Clinton

410. “If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.”

— William J. Clinton

411. “We’ve had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington’s second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.”

— William J. Clinton

412. “If you believe in a security strategy – a strategy of more friends and fewer enemies, a strategy of greater cooperation and a strategy of keeping America better at home as we grow more diverse – we have to build the minds and hearts to build this kind of world.”

— William J. Clinton

413. “I think we need to push harder, we the Democrats, because it’s an open door for the Republicans – prosperity centers.”

— William J. Clinton

414. “I mean my life was a combination of fascination with other people, with politics, and with policy, and the impact of government decisions on people’s lives and the life of our nation and the life of the world.”

— William J. Clinton

415. “Don’t you ever forget that in the end, our future is tied to people.”

— William J. Clinton

416. “NASA even sent Chuck Berry’s music on a space probe searching for intelligent life in outer space. Well, now, if they’re out there, they’re duck walking.”

— William J. Clinton

417. “We need to be creating a world that we would like to live in when we’re not the biggest power on the block.”

— William J. Clinton

418. “I challenge every business person in America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system to try to hire somebody off welfare. And try hard.”

— William J. Clinton

419. “Let me be clear: we are still a nation of immigrants, and we honor all those immigrants who are working hard to become new citizens.”

— William J. Clinton

420. “Sometimes there is a difference in what is legal and what ought to be done.”

— William J. Clinton

421. “Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation, we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow citizens, this is our time. Let us embrace it.”

— William J. Clinton

422. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

423. “You live in the age of interdependence. Borders don’t count for much or stop much, good or bad, anymore.”

— William J. Clinton

424. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

425. “There’s this whole problem of trafficking, which has gotten worse in the economic downturn, which disproportionately affects young women, but also affects some young men who are sold into bondage, into basically servitude for indebted work that they can often never escape from.”

— William J. Clinton

426. “President Obama’s record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.”

— William J. Clinton

427. “We’re going to build the bridge to the 21st century, we have to make our children free – free of the vise grip of guns and gangs and drugs; free to build lives of hope.”

— William J. Clinton

428. “From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle class tax cut. I never did meet any voter who thought that.”

— William J. Clinton

429. “What happened to us in September, 2001, is a microcosmic but painful and powerful example of the fact we live in an inter-dependent world that is not yet an integrated global community.”

— William J. Clinton

430. “Millions of people of color still experience racism daily.”

— William J. Clinton

431. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

432. “For four years we’ve been cooperating exhaustively.”

— William J. Clinton

433. “We must all be profoundly grateful for the magnificent achievements of our forbearers in this century. Yet perhaps in the daily press of events, in the clash of controversy, we don’t see our own time for what it truly is – a new dawn for America.”

— William J. Clinton

434. “In the whole history of this country, we have probably won more friends from the power of our example than from the power of our military.”

— William J. Clinton

435. “A few months ago, and again this week, bin Laden publicly vowed to publicly wage a terrorist war against America, saying, and I quote, “We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They’re all targets.” Their mission is murder, and their history is bloody.”

— William J. Clinton

436. “One of the things that I think we have learned is that we should all be very careful about making predictions about the future.”

— William J. Clinton

437. “If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama.”

— William J. Clinton

438. “I refuse to be part of a generation that celebrates the death of communism abroad with the loss of the American dream at home.”

— William J. Clinton

439. “We should pass a flex time law that allows employees to take their overtime pay in money or in time off, depending on what’s better for their family.”

— William J. Clinton

440. “What we did with deeming rules were designed – it was designed to keep costs from coming on to the government that should be borne by families of immigrants who actually have incomes and can afford to pay.”

— William J. Clinton

441. “When I was president, I knew exactly what I wanted to do every day to bring America together and create a greater sense of opportunity and a larger sense of responsibility and a stronger sense of community.”

— William J. Clinton

442. “Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don’t, they can go straight to hell.”

— William J. Clinton

443. “I want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.”

— William J. Clinton

444. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

445. “And I have a plan to do even better, to end welfare as we know it.”

— William J. Clinton

446. “We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria.”

— William J. Clinton

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

— William J. Clinton

448. “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.”

— William J. Clinton

449. “First, I worry about climate change. It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we’re making irrelevant and impossible.”

— William J. Clinton

450. “President Obama’s approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.”

— William J. Clinton