The President Is Missing Quotes

“Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Gerald Ford once said that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the “more perfect union.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“do as much as you can for as many as you can, every day. Even on the bad days, there’s always something good you can do.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Sometimes the “them” strategy is just a narcotic to feed the beast in all of us.”
― Bill Clinton, The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade

“Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“I’m out of rabbits and hats to pull them out of.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for. I did not betray our country and my sworn duty to protect and defend it when I went missing to battle what we came to call Dark”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“You learn to live with the paradox. Meanwhile, you keep looking for chances to push the limits back, to do as much as you can as many as you can, every day. Even on the bad days, there's something good you can do.”
― Bill Clinton, James Patterson, The President Is Missing

“Sun Tzu said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,”
― Bill Clinton, The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade

“All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“How’ve you been feeling?” “I have a gigantic pain in my ass,” I say. “Can you look and see if the Speaker of the House is up there?”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“One of the great ironies of the modern age,” he begins, “is that the advancements of mankind can make us more powerful and yet more vulnerable at the same time. The greater the power, the greater the vulnerability. You think, rightly so, that you are at the apex of your power, that you can do more things than ever before. But I see you at the peak of your vulnerability. “The reason is reliance. Our society has become completely reliant on technology.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“And now she’s a parasite, living off her host. If he makes a mistake, she made the mistake.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“She always said, You boys aren’t rich enough to afford not to pay attention.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“If there is nothing else to learn from history, it’s that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led. Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“A whole host of functions that were once performed without the Internet now can only be performed with the Internet. There is no fallback.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“All too often, those who rail against “them” prevail over earnest pleas to remember what “we” can be and do together. Our brains have worked this way for a long time. Maybe they always will. But we have to keep trying. That’s the permanent mission our Founding Fathers left us—moving toward the “more perfect union.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“And you hear me, you unelected flunky. I only take orders from the president. Until I hear from him, I’ll be”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Sooner or later, every president faces decisions in which the right choice is bad politics, at least in the short term. If the stakes are high, you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn. It’s the job you promised to do.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." That's a job no president can do alone. It's up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“this guy ever had an unselfish thought, as my mama would say, it would die of loneliness.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“Everyone eligible to vote should be able to do so without unnecessary inconvenience,”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“That boy’s so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom.”
― Bill Clinton, The President Is Missing

“If this guy ever had an unselfish thought, as my mama would say, it would die of loneliness.”
― Bill Clinton, The President is Missing: The political thriller of the decade