62 Quotes by Paddy Ashdown

The dangers of putting your conscience and judgement before your popularity are often far less than we politicians realise. The loss of votes in short term is often compensated for in the long term by the gain of respect.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

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.

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.