“Sometimes you can’t worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.” We”
―
Barack Obama
“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”
―
Barack Obama
“My heart is filled with love for this country.”
―
Barack Obama
“I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.”
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Barack Obama
“right; maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape. An escape from poverty or boredom or crime or the shackles of your skin.”
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Barack Obama
“Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”
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Barack Obama
“Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness. No one deserves to be bullied.”
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Barack Obama
“White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first; I felt like a non-native speaker tripping over a difficult phrase.”
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Barack Obama
“The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high-- whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward-- that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives-- professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values-- indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.”
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Barack Obama
“We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.”
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Barack Obama
“The people back home, they didn’t even know anyone else who had ridden in an airplane before. So they expected everything from him. ‘Ah, Barack, you are a big shot now. You should give me something. You should help me.’ Always these pressures from family. And he couldn’t say no, he was so generous. You”
―
Barack Obama
“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes....”
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Barack Obama
“Issues, action, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts. They bespoke a certain hardheadedness, a worldly lack of sentiment; politics, not religion.”
―
Barack Obama
“As she spoke, her voice never wavered; it was the voice of someone who has forced a larger meaning out of tragedy.
―
Barack Obama
“All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.”
―
Barack Obama
