Bill Clinton Quotes

The American Left complains that we have no right to be the world's police force. On the contrary. We've been the world's janitor for almost a century, and after September 11, it became obvious it's better, safer, and more productive to change things instead of cleaning up after the mess.

There will be times … when our safety will not be directly threatened, but our interests and values are …. In such cases, we should not be afraid to act.

There are times when only America can make the difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression, between life death. We cannot save all the world's children but we can save many of them.

Our role in the world is not to roam the globe looking for new dictators to topple. Our role in the world is to make ourselves a beacon of hope. Make ourselves stronger at home, but also our role in the world, yes, is also to confront evil when it rises.

We should be therefore supporting a larger Europe, and in so doing we should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity in the world which is the necessary foundation for a stable international system in which our leadership could be fruitfully exercised.

Our foreign policy has been inspired by two simple principles: the determination to place France's interests above all others, and the conviction that France has no greater interest than that of peace.

America’s military bases around the world are centers of stability in unstable regions.

We, 'the United States of America, are now called upon to play the part of Florence Nightingale; to take our stand and insist upon it that the slaughter shall cease. Oh! let us give money, let us give life, but let us stand by our principles of civil and religious liberty.'

America remains the indispensable nation. There are times when America, and only America, can make a difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression.

If the international community must act, then America must lead.

I do not support individual countries taking military action against another country because of its human rights record, or subsequently justifying taking such action on human rights grounds.

We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.

We can't build a safer world with honorable intentions and good will alone. Achieving the fundamental goals our nation seeks in world affairs - peace, human rights, economics progress national independence and international stability - means supporting our friends and defending our interests.

On issues like Ukraine, on issues like Syria, we've had very significant differences [with Russia].

A sad fact about the politics of Washington is that some of the most important issues facing the United States and the world are rarely debated in a serious manner. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of foreign policy.

American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.

There are many cases around the world in which the presence of UN peace-keeping forces has had a somewhat beneficial effect.

I think the global community always has a ... has a responsibility to any humanitarian crisis. And I think it's in our best interest to address a humanitarian crisis on this scale because displacement can can lead to a lot of instability and aggression.

People say the war in Iraq is a bad war, and the war in Afghanistan is a good war, but what's the difference between them? Democratic people around the world cannot accept that this is a good war. This is just endless war.

We [United States] are the only military superpower. We have no idea how long this is going to last, so we ought to get every bad guy we can and fix every problem we can.

On foreign affairs, we've already begun enormously productive talks with many foreign leaders, much of it you've covered, to move forward toward stability, security and peace in the most troubled regions of the world, which there are many.

In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

I believe the previous administration shrunk from some of our responsibilities as a superpower and made the world a more dangerous place.

What would be the difference if we retreated and let the French and Germans make decisions for the world? We tried that twice in the last century. Isolationsim, refusing to accept our role in the world, and delaying our response to evildoers ultimately cost fifty-three million lives in World War 2 alone. The preemption policy of the Bush administration, taking the war to the enemy and exporting democracy and freedom, has liberated fifty million.

For decades, our differences with Iran meant that our governments almost never spoke to each other. Ultimately, that did not advance America's interests.