Bill Clinton: “Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that--a lot of people seemed to have known in general, but most people…”

“Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that--a lot of people seemed to have known in general, but most people didn't--a lot of the people who knew, I think, didn't know that they might do what they did. And that's why it's important to feed all this stuff in someplace, because there are people who do know that--let me come back to the beginning here. I'd like for you all to talk about this. Let me just say what I was going to say. One of the things that all kids are taught by their parents, you know, is this old ``sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'' That ain't true--if you'll let me use bad grammar. [Laughter] That's not true, because a lot of this stuff starts with words, you know? And even in what I do and the people I deal with, it's amazing how much energy is lost and how many things are not done for America because people in Washington, DC, at the highest levels of power and influence, get hurt by what other people say about them--mean, bad things other people say about them. And then they get in the position where they try to bait each other to say mean, bad things, you know. And I think that somehow maybe we all, particularly in a culture that desensitizes people to violence, if they're profoundly alienated-- and I still think that's a big part of this--all of us have to do a better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by the words other people use against them. That's something that really struck me when I read these accounts, is how alienated these young people were because these athletes were saying bad things about them or who else was saying bad things about them. They were different, so then they had to look for somebody to feel bad about. And that's why I like this peer mediation thing, because it tends to take the sting out of words at the earliest possible time. But people really still get hurt so badly by what is said about them. And somehow, we've got to make people more immune to that. Go ahead. [A student expressed concern that the Littleton attackers may have learned to make bombs with information from the Internet, and asked what the Government was doing to prevent the dissemination of such information.]”