“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works”
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Barack Obama
“The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. . . . What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in their country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”
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Barack Obama
“Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been aided by a Constitution that--despite being marred by the original sin of slavery--has at its very core the ideas of equal citizenship under the laws; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to all comers, regardless of status or title or rank.”
―
Barack Obama
“They spend half they lives worrying about what white folks think.”
―
Barack Obama
“Let's be honest. Sometimes art is dangerous, though. And that's why governments sometimes get nervous about art. But one of the things I truly believe is if you try to suppress the arts, then I think you are suppressing the deepest dreams and aspirations of the people.”
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Barack Obama
“I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity.”
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Barack Obama
“doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”
―
Barack Obama
“I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware—is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all. And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come.
―
Barack Obama
“in a climate of constant technological change.”
―
Barack Obama
“Setiap strategi untuk mengurangi kemiskinan antargenerasi harus dipusatkan pada pekerjaan, bukan pada kesejahteraan--bukan hanya karena pekerjaan itu memberikan kebebasan dan pendapatan, melainkan juga karena pekerjaan itu mendatangkan kedisiplinan, struktur, harga diri, dan kesempatan untuk berkembang dalam kehidupan masyarakat.”
―
Barack Obama
“I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family.”
―
Barack Obama
“Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.”
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Barack Obama
“the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us...”
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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
“If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper - that makes this country work.”
―
Barack Obama
