Quotes from My Life

Bill Clinton ·  969 pages

Rating: (39.2K votes)


“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


About the author

Bill Clinton
Born place: in Hope, Arkansas, The United States
Born date August 19, 1946
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“It's not that," said Samm, "it's just... I used to think the world was worse for what we've done, both our species, but out here I don't think the world even cares who we are. Or were. We came and went, and life goes on, and the land that was always here before us will still be here after we're dead and gone. Birds will still fly. Rain will still fall. The world didn't end, it just... reset.”
― Dan Wells, quote from Fragments


“Words held meaning, but voices held emotion.”
― Kimberly Derting, quote from The Pledge


“After Mother got her picture, we all stood around the fire truck eating moon-shaped cookies dusted with powdered sugar that the mayor's wife had brought in some Tupperware. It was stuff like that that'd break your heart about Leechfield, what Daddy meant when he said the town was too ugly not to love.”
― Mary Karr, quote from The Liars' Club


“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”
― Carl Sagan, quote from The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God


“Imitating another style is simply a sham.”
― quote from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai


Interesting books

Against Interpretation and Other Essays
(5.1K)
Against Interpretati...
by Susan Sontag
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
(699)
Consolations: The So...
by David Whyte
Just One Night
(2.2K)
Just One Night
by Kyra Davis
The Source
(9.3K)
The Source
by J.D. Horn
Sister Carry
(32.3K)
Sister Carry
by Theodore Dreiser
The Family Fang
(21.7K)
The Family Fang
by Kevin Wilson

About BookQuoters

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.