Top 105 Quotes about Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton left office with a more than 60% approval rating.

Whether it’s Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton or others, the personal lives do come into play, and people do judge you for that.

If ‘Mystery Train’ is my Nixon book and ‘Lipstick Traces’ my Reagan book, ‘Invisible Republic’ is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he’d done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.

Along with former President Bill Clinton, we have Sam Nunn to thank for the sorry debacle of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’

Arkansas, the state Bill Clinton loves and that loves him back, is a place with just no pretension at all.

Like many Americans, I’ve always been intrigued by Bill Clinton. I obviously didn’t always agree with him – enjoyed running against his legacy in 2000, when Al Gore was his designated successor, but I don’t have anything negative I would say about Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton told me that when he was 14, he shook John Kennedy’s hand, and that inspired him to be president.

To put that into some perspective, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore had first taken the idea of the Kyoto Protocol up to the Congress, the United States Senate voted it down 95 to nothing.

This gets back to the fundamental lesson of political survival that Bill Clinton taught me, which is if you make it about the American people’s lives instead of your life, you’re going to be okay.

Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors – they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking.

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child’s life – the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you’ll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

When my brother-in-law, BIll Clinton, was elected, he had gay friends. That was a coming out.

No one heard about Bill Clinton on his first trip to New Hampshire. I showed Mike Huckabee around the state years before he ran, and no one knew him then, either.

Bill Clinton has done more to help the middle class than any leader in decades.

The problem was with Bill Clinton, the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.

Being very, very honest, I’ve watched more Bill Clinton speeches than stand-up specials. Steve Jobs commencements. They’re just great orators. I love people who boldly share their point of view.

It’s more than a little ironic that the mantra that swept Bill Clinton into office is exactly what prevented Hillary from winning it. Somehow, the Manhattan billionaire became the voice of the disaffected blue-collar middle class in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Bill Clinton is a classic, old-school Southern pragmatic Democrat.

Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster – Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

When I think of the person that I thought was Bill Clinton, I think he had genuine remorse. When I think of the person that I now see is 100 percent politician, I think he’s sorry he got caught.

Bill Clinton, talking about the need to financially empower wives and mothers in regressive countries, once remarked that women have ‘the responsibility gene.’ No one has that gene more markedly than his wife.

I worked for a lot of candidates, in tough campaigns that lost. Most of my candidates lost until Bill Clinton. There was always a point where you look in their eyes and they knew it was over. And there was never that point with Clinton. He never quit. He never gave up.

Bill Clinton is a person who causes a lot of passion both ways about people, and there’s certainly a lot of turmoil if you look back at the eight years. But there was a lot of good, too.

When Bill Clinton ran in ’92, and I listened to him, and I had of course known of his record from Arkansas, I found him extraordinarily inspirational, and I voted Democratic.

Mitt Romney is a true Mormon. John Edwards and Bill Clinton are not real Mormons. It was not ‘Brigham Young’ they were chanting. It was ‘Bring ’em young.’

The diminishment of southern contests is the kind of veiled racist rhetoric that Bill Clinton deployed memorably in South Carolina in 2008, and which does not look any more attractive on Bernie – the guy whose campaign is centered on the premise that he plays cleaner and more progressive politics than his opponents.

I haven’t watched MTV’s annual Video Music Awards since Bill Clinton was president. I was wearing a plastic choker, and Alanis Morissette won for ‘Ironic.’

There’s no smarter politician out there than Bill Clinton.

I met Gerald Ford. I met Richard Nixon. I met Jimmy Carter. I met Dwight Eisenhower when he was a general. George Bush senior. I haven’t met Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, although I got a letter from him.

I was well known to African Americans before Bill Clinton discovered me. He was like Christopher Columbus riding up on something he didn’t understand.

I think it’s important for people to understand that this started with President Bill Clinton. He, as president, thought it was such a big priority, he passed the defense of marriage – defense of traditional non-gay marriage – that we have it as a federal law.

Now, today is the day we honor, of course, the Presidents, ranging from George Washington, who couldn’t tell a lie, to George Bush, who couldn’t tell the truth, to Bill Clinton, who couldn’t tell the difference.

I can’t do anything too serious like Saddam Hussein, but I would like to do Bill Clinton. That’d be fun.

When Bill Clinton chose Al Gore in 1992 – from the same generational, ideological, and geographical background as his – it underscored his campaign’s central argument that this was a clash between the past and the future, that ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’ was indeed the campaign’s anthem.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

Ever since John Kennedy, Democrats have had a weakness for dashing younger men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and, I suppose, Jimmy Carter. They balance their tickets with senior statesmen – Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden, Walter Mondale. (Al Gore was young but played ancient).

The job of the president of the United States is to talk to the public, is to explain to them. Now, some presidents talk too much, like Bill Clinton. Some presidents try to talk but don’t know how, like George Bush senior.

Bill Clinton, who packs his own star power, has been a big draw as well as a big drag on his wife’s campaign.

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.

The Republicans learned well from Bill Clinton.

Do I trust Yasser Arafat? Of course not. Why should I? Why should anyone trust a politician, whether Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, or Yasser Arafat?

I think people really liked Bill Clinton. They’d like to see him get elected, but Hillary’s just a different animal.

I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.

In 1996, Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over in the State of the Union address.

If you’re Obama, can you imagine being lectured to about honesty and integrity from a convicted perjurer, Bill Clinton? My gosh, folks, I mean, literally how far has one fallen when that is the case?

Al Gore has all of the positive attributes of Bill Clinton but is saddled with none of his negatives. He’s a great big teddy bear of a political figure – Teflon coated, road tested, and everyone’s nice guy.

I like Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him.

Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don’t have labels for middle-class Southerners.

I was the guy that told Bill Clinton he was going to win. I had gotten the final polling numbers. He had a comfortable lead. He was not going to lose.

History shows that people often do cast their votes for amorphous reasons-the most powerful among them being the need for change. Just ask Bill Clinton.

I think most people… would be glad to pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president, if only they could have the same economy they had when Bill Clinton was president.