William Weld Quotes

I'm a member of Societies of Former World Leaders. And I've always been sort of in favor of constructive engagement around the world. And Gary Johnson has influenced me on criminal justice reform. I think I had some influence in discussions with him about the approach to international affairs.

I think there are a number of issues that we should be addressing. I have put forth a plan to defeat ISIS.

I remember the president-elect [Donald Trump] saying that I'm going to do something to dramatically, positively change communities, particularly in urban areas, and I think we've got to hold his feet to the fire to all those issues as well as all the issues that you addressed, you and many others addressed yesterday as it relates to criminal justice, as it relates to voting oppression.

I think, when the African-American community understands my record on criminal justice, my record on economics, the agenda we're bringing forth, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, dealing with the fact that we have more people in jail, shamefully, than any other country on Earth, that I am against the death penalty, Secretary Clinton is not, I think, as people become familiar with my ideas, we are going to do better and better.

Over the last few years a lot of people have become aware of the inequities in the criminal justice system, right now, with our overall crime rate and incarceration rate both falling, we're at a moment when some good people in both parties, Republicans and Democrats and folks all across the country, are coming up with ideas to make the system work smarter and better.

I think it's important to encourage young people to tell their own stories and to speak openly about their own experiences with the criminal justice system and the experiences of their family. We need to ensure that the classroom environment is a supportive one so that the shame and stigma can be dispelled.

I think that we are in a position to continue to make progress, but it's gonna require us to both recognize what the problems are, also recognize the progress we've made. Last point I'd make on this, since we're on criminal justice: During the course of my presidency crime has been the lowest it's been probably since the '60s.

I've laid out a platform that I think would begin to remedy some of the problems we have in the criminal justice system.

We need to take a hard look at the war on drugs and the number of non-violent offenders who end up getting their lives destroyed by going to prison. We need to look at mandatory minimum sentencing and give judges more flexibility when there are issues of drug abuse or addiction.

I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard.

Justified by the war on drugs, the United States is in the midst of a prison binge made obvious by the fact that since 1970, the number of people behind bars... has increased 600 percent.

I think that the United States has always been most effective when it is leading both from power and principle.

Putin is going to be considering the United States his number one enemy no matter who our president is - and no matter who's elected, that isn't going to change. I think Putin is loving the media saying he's got all this power, 'cause they're a Third World country outside of their military.

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.

I never think about issues when I'm working on a novel. Issues are things that happen to people in sufficient numbers to elicit widespread attention; in other words, they're just life happening. That's what I think about: life, and telling a story.

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin.

I think that Joe Biden is qualified in many respects. But I do point out that he's been wrong on many foreign policy and national security issues, which is supposed to be his strength.

I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side. But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.

I really think we were charting a course to having a more sane response to mass incarceration, to drug use, and to understanding that the war on drugs has resulted only in the empowerment of vast criminal enterprises and the destruction of democracies around the world. And all that is coming to a miserable, horrific halt.

Few knew in 2000 that George W. Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. Once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that some neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. Bush certainly sees himself as having been given an endorsement. He was asked why Donald Rumsfeld,Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz have been promoted, these people who led us into the debacle in Iraq. Bush said there was accountability-it was the election. So there we are.

I think most people, when they take a look at the candidates and the positions of the candidates, realize that protecting this country and keeping this economy going are the two most important issues. And you can't protect the country if you retreat from overseas, and you can't keep the economy growing if you raise taxes. And that's exactly what the Democrats in the House would like to do.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.

I think there are a number of little Ribbentrops running around. But Molotov hasn't found a good enough deal yet.

I think that the over-incarceration of black and brown folk is one of the great crimes of American society.

I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America.