Bill Clinton Quotes

If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign.

I've never covered the president in any way other than that he is ultimately responsible.

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded.

If the President really wanted to know exactly how Rove and Libby were involved, he could walk down to their offices and demand that they answer him honestly.

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.

In the end, the responsibility of government abuse lies with the president.

As a member of Congress, I strongly believe I have a responsibility to be truthful, even if that means delivering difficult news.

The president has to have the trust, earn the trust, maintain the trust of people in order to lead. And there's nothing that will lose it quicker than a sense that he's in it for a quick buck.

I think the voters believe that when you become president of the United States, you have a higher obligation and a higher standard than anybody in the world. And if you violate that standard, they're going to remember it on election day.

I think our nation faces enormous challenges, and we need leaders who are willing to tell the truth and do the right thing regardless of the consequences.

If you drink too much, you go out and you harm to somebody, you have to suffer the consequences. Same way with health matters. You don't have the right to demand that someone else take care of you because of your habits.

Justice needs to be served, what I think people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth. That's what people around the country expect.

I'm not a fan of justifying bad behavior or justifying why people are the way they are. I think that's a cop out. I don't have a lot of empathy for that.

Most people who have told a lie think they got away with it … when in fact, they didn’t

We must maintain the integrity of the White House, and that integrity must be real, not transparent. There can be no whitewash at the White House.

Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.

In order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment.

I don't want to mess up my life. You only get one shot. I don't want to let my fans or anybody else down. So, I always think before I act. And as long as I do that, I'll be okay.

People think that the politician is just part of a system, and whether they're lying or not doesn't matter.

People don’t find the personal lives of people with much, much more power than any celebrity would have — don’t find their personal lives interesting. I think if you put the lives of people who controlled billions of dollars on the front news of every single paper, the world would be a better place. It’s the spin culture. If you took away publicists and things and people spoke for themselves, then they’d have to be responsible for their words.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

I just think the American people had expected that the president of the United States would be able to describe what he's going to do in the next four years. But he can't. He can't even explain what he's done in the last four years.

There was a real choice when [Barack Obama] became president. It was a very difficult choice - to say, "We're not going to hold senior officials to account with the same laws that every other citizen in the country is held to," or "This is a nation that believes in the rule of law."

We want accountability. We just buried a president [President Gerald Ford] who did not hold another president [President Nixon] accountable for war crimes and that's why we're in Iraq right now. Our leaders who get us into these messes are the ones who need to be held accountable.