“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.”
“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
“Indeed, the test of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence of starvation among its masses.”
“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.”
“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?”
“Be careful of your thoughts,
For your thoughts become your words;
Be careful of your words,
For your words become your deeds;
Be careful of your deeds,
For your deeds become your habits;
Be careful of your habits,
For your habits become your character;
Be careful of your character,
For your character becomes your destiny.”
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”
“Let us realize that engagement and detachment aren’t opposite—the more engaged we become, the more detached we will have to be..”
“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the result of other people’s thinking.
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
“All people should strive to learn before they die: what they are running from, and to, and why.”