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It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them.

Paddy Ashdown
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What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.
Paddy Ashdown
I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war.
Paddy Ashdown
We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.
Paddy Ashdown
We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war.
Paddy Ashdown
It was a superb agreement to end a war, but a very bad agreement to make a state. From now on, we have to part company with Dayton and try to build a modern democratic state, for which I have tried to lay the foundations.
Paddy Ashdown
We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.
Paddy Ashdown
It's not my job to be popular. I'm goal-driven; my job is to get results.
Paddy Ashdown
Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.
Paddy Ashdown
The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?
Paddy Ashdown
Politics is compromise.
Paddy Ashdown
It would be a foolish high representative who worked that way.
Paddy Ashdown
I love this country, I love these people, though I can't say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold.
Paddy Ashdown
People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt.
Paddy Ashdown
I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.
Paddy Ashdown
My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.
Paddy Ashdown
I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.
Paddy Ashdown
Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.
Paddy Ashdown
I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.
Paddy Ashdown
Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.
Paddy Ashdown
It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them.
Paddy Ashdown
The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.
Paddy Ashdown
I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.
Paddy Ashdown
I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals' broad agreement with what I do.
Paddy Ashdown
I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.
Paddy Ashdown
We have invented a new human right here the right to return home after a war.
Paddy Ashdown
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.
A. R. Ammons
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
Mason Cooley
So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
Ruggiero Ricci
I wouldn't change Buffy for anything and I wouldn't change the course in which she has evolved but it is nice to be able to do something that is a little different.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.
Carol Bellamy
Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.
Henry Fielding
I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.
Sarah Polley
Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
Kin Hubbard
You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.
John Cleese
I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.
Benjamin Harrison
It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.
Gerry Adams
Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.
Richard Dean Anderson
A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.
Henry A. Wallace
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
Richard P. Feynman
In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.
John Naisbitt
The game has kept faith with the public, maintaining its old admission price for nearly thirty years while other forms of entertainment have doubled and tripled in price. And it will probably never change.
Connie Mack
One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.
Star Jones
But the real focus should be on people who are buying today because the base is so big it will take a long time for any change materialize on an overall basis.
Sanjay Kumar
Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.
An Wang
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
Georg Simmel
Headteachers and governing bodies run schools and that won't change.
Estelle Morris
Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.
Tony Robbins