“Anger closes the mind and cools the heart when both are need most”
“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.”
“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centred: Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies: Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous: Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow: Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God:
It was never between you and them anyway.”
“In the networking world, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.”
“A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, just slightly longer than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament.”
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
“It is what we make of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
“So I grew up feeling that I wasn’t good enough, and that no-one would love me unless I was perfect. But no-one’s perfect, we’re not meant to be perfect. We’re meant to be complete. But it’s hard to be complete if you’re trying to be perfect, so you kind of become disembodied. And I spent a lot of my life that way.” ” And if you don’t own your strength… Women like me tend to always look over their shoulder to see who… “Who’s the leader? Who’s the smart one?” Never thinking it might be ME. Took a long time for me to get over that.”
“Peace, development and justice are all connected to each other. We cannot talk about economic development without talking about peace. How can we expect economic development in a battlefield?”
“The roots of effective leadership lie in simple things, one of which is listening. Listening to someone demonstrates respect; it shows that you value their ideas and are willing to hear them.”