“I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can’t be judged by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain.
Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story – of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. All my life I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to people a chance to have better stories. - Page 15, Paragraph 5, ‘My Life’ by Bill Clinton. –Hard cover version-”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“A man is more than the sum of all the things he can do.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so; instead, we have drifted. And that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“The idea that power was an end in itself, rather than a means to provide the security and opportunity necessary for the pursuit of happiness, seemed to him stupid and self-defeating." (about Senator Fulbright)”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“And to the memory of my grandfather, who taught me to look up to people others looked down on, because we’re not so different after all”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“Psychologically, we’re all a complex mixture of hopes and fears. Each day we wake up with the scales tipping a bit one way or the other. If they go too far toward hopefulness, we can become naïve and unrealistic. If the scales tilt too far the other way, we can get consumed by paranoia and hatred.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control.”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life
“Faith is realizing that you always get what you need.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, quote from Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge 1995-2000
“The notion of children makes me ill. The thought of having one... when you see those guys in the supermarket, wheeling the trolley around while their brats whine and wheedle and some blundering sow questions every little thing they take off the shelves. I mean, just the fucking idea of it, the very word: family. Whenever I see it, on travel brochures, on house schedules... I feel sick.”
― John Niven, quote from Kill Your Friends
“Yet for every peak there is a valley.”
― Garth Stein, quote from Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog
“I'm not going to end up in some heap of crushed dreams.”
― Steven dos Santos, quote from The Culling
“Learning is a continuous process and your training has merely prepared you for that never-ending journey. Learn from everyone, everywhere, and everything. Use every moment to do so. That is the only legacy we leave behind when the Great God of Time, calls us back to his abode. My second piece of advice is, when you are in positions of power, the trappings of power are many and may often hinder you in taking the right decision. When your mind knows not what to do, here is a mantra for differentiating between right and wrong: any decision you take will affect some people favourably and others unfavourably. The right decision is always based on the greatest common good and not in favour of one particular group.” Bhishma”
― Anand Neelakantan, quote from Ajaya: Roll of the Dice
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.