“When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president…the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy." President Obama, in conversation with Marilynne Robinson, in New York Review of Books”
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Barack Obama
“I've got daughters. Nine years old and six years old. First of all, I'm gonna teach them about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them PUNISHED with a baby.”
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Barack Obama
“It’s sad to say, but as much as I cared for the Old Man, and worried about him, I was glad not to have to live with him. I just left him to himself and never looked back.”
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Barack Obama
“the world was shrinking, sympathies changing;”
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Barack Obama
“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”
Truth: Obama later said, “This was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech and we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given. The point we were simply making was, is that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.”
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Barack Obama
“When I meet with world leaders, what’s striking — whether it’s in Europe or here in Asia…” — Barack Obama, mistakenly referring to Hawaii as Asia while holding a press conference outside Honolulu, Nov. 16, 2011”
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Barack Obama
“Change won't come from the top, Change will come from mobilized grassroots.”
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Barack Obama
“the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done. It was a pretty convincing”
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Barack Obama
“I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family.”
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Barack Obama
“We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.”
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Barack Obama
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do, it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
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Barack Obama
“If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.”
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Barack Obama
“The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.”
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Barack Obama
“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
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Barack Obama