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

“Isadore shut her eyes and sleep came right to her, a handsome prince, picking her up in his arms and carrying her to her silly dreams. Silly dreams of a man with brilliant green eyes and strange tattoos that didn’t quite find her worth loving.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from The Waking


“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”
― David Allen, quote from Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity


“You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?”
― Kyung-Sook Shin, quote from Please Look After Mom


“Maybe it’s true that the people who live through the times that become history’s pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of the Civil War.”
― Jean Hegland, quote from Into the Forest


“It is said a man doesn’t get old while his mother lives. I think it’s true. You are always a child in her eyes. It is irritating in the extreme. But you know, when they have gone, you’d give the earth just to hear them treating you like a child once more.”
― David Gemmell, quote from Sword in the Storm


Interesting books

Remarkable Creatures
(35.5K)
Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier
My Uncle Oswald
(8.6K)
My Uncle Oswald
by Roald Dahl
Heroes Die
(9.2K)
Heroes Die
by Matthew Woodring Stover
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
(24.3K)
Empire of the Summer...
by S.C. Gwynne
Hey Nostradamus!
(16.9K)
Hey Nostradamus!
by Douglas Coupland
Thirteen Days to Midnight
(3.8K)
Thirteen Days to Mid...
by Patrick Carman

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.