I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the duty of a leader to take action rather than merely reject proposals.
William J. Clinton's quote reflects the responsibility of elected officials to actively engage in governance and make decisions that benefit the public, rather than simply vetoing or dismissing ideas. It suggests that leadership involves taking initiative and being accountable for enacting change, rather than avoiding commitment through inaction.
In practice
During a political debate to emphasize the importance of taking decisive actions for constituents.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell.
The cost of leadership is self-interest.
There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful, who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
I don't need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.
Class is more important than a game.
You're always growing as a coach, and I am not done growing, and hopefully I'm not done winning.
Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a "nervous system", to coordinate its actions.
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