Ken Starr Quotes
Don't blame the messenger because the message is unpleasant.
Starr, Kenneth W. Testimony. Impeachment Inquiry: William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States: Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fifth Congress, Second Session, Presentation by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, November 19, 1998. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.
The meeting was to discuss continuing strategy for the Civil Rights Movement. There were, at this point, several different directions in which they could go. The irony of this meeting is that King was not pleased that most of the other leaders did not place the strategic importance of the Memphis strike that he did. They wanted him do appear in other venues for other purposes. His statement about getting killed was meant for the others to consider carefully how and why they wanted King to appear. In a few days, he was killed in Memphis—not implementing one of the other leader’s “brilliant” ideas, but implementing his own where most of them thought it of secondary importance and would prefer that he appear elsewhere instead. After King’s assassination, every leader at that meeting wished that he had been more persuasive in talking King out of the Memphis activity.
Kenneth Winston Starr is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge and 39th solicitor general of the United States. He is best known for heading an investigation of members of the Clinton administration, known as the Whitewater controversy.
