“The very essence of leadership is [ that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
“We must never cease our exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to return to the place where we first began and to truly know that place for the first time.”
“You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.”
“All people should strive to learn before they die: what they are running from, and to, and why.”
“ANDREW DENTON: We’ve seen the recent Senate report into the CIA intelligence failures in Iraq. What do you make of Michael Moore’s argument that President Bush is fraudulently elected and is pursuing a war for fraudulent reasons?
BILL CLINTON: Well, I… Those are two different things. I strongly, strongly disagree with the Supreme Court decision in the Bush v. Gore case in 2000. I think it is one of the very worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made and I explain in my book, in terms I hope a layman can understand, why I think it was a gross abuse of power. In effect, the Supreme Court robbed tens of thousands of their fellow citizens of their right to vote. So, I think that was wrong.
So, on the war, I have a slightly different view from Michael Moore but certainly a different view from the Bush Administration. Uh, the CIA is now being blamed for all this bad intelligence in America. They miss some things, you know. Apparently, they should have known that there was less likelihood of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. OK, let’s posit that. I don’t think they cooked that up for President Bush ‘cause that’s what I was told for eight years too. But the CIA did not say there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They didn’t say that. The Administration did but they didn’t. So, my view is that the President and Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Wolfowitz, they wanted to go to war in Iraq to replace Saddam because they thought the whole enterprise had merit in and of itself – to shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, to make Israel feel more secure and give America more leverage in making peace with Palestinians and Israelis. And I think that, in the beginning, this whole weapons of mass destruction thing, for them, was maybe a good way to get their foot in the door but not the major issue for them.”
“Because women’s liberation is a movement of the powerless for the powerless, its attraction is not immediately clear to the powerless, who feel they need alliance with the powerful to survive.”
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we had when we created them.”
“Even if someone has done something that is disrespectful or even harmful, if you are still harbouring negative emotions towards that person or in recollection of the memory, then you are continuing the process and extending the effect it’s having on you.”
“No matter how educated or wealthy you are,
if you don’t have peace of mind, you won’t be happy.”