Paddy Ashdown quotes

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)
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. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
It would be a foolish high representative who worked that way. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
Politics is compromise. (Paddy Ashdown)
It's not my job to be popular. I'm goal-driven; my job is to get results. View quote
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. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party. View quote
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? View quote
Paddy Ashdown
Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press. View quote
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)
I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war. View quote
Paddy Ashdown
I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Paddy Ashdown