“I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I'm asking you to believe in yours."
Keeping faith with those who serve must always be a core American value and a cornerstone of American patriotism. Because America's commitment to its servicemen and women begins at enlistment, and it must never end.”
―
Barack Obama
“Malcolm X avait formulé un jour, le voeu que le sang blanc qui coulait en lui (...) soit expurgé. (...) Mais en ce qui me concernait, je savais que dans mon cheminement vers le respect de moi-même, jamais je ne pourrais réduire mon propre sang blanc au rang de pure abstraction. Car que supprimerais-je en moi par la même occasion, si je devais laisser ma mère et mes grands-parents à la frontière d'un territoire inexploré ?”
―
Barack Obama
“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.”
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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
“it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight!”
―
Barack Obama
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”
―
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.”
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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.”
―
Barack Obama
“We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
―
Barack Obama
“Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed.”
―
Barack Obama
“We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.”
―
Barack Obama
“Like a tourist, I watched the range of human possibility on display, trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people I saw, looking for some opening through which I could reenter.”
―
Barack Obama
“Indeed, it's not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.”
―
Barack Obama
“We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist. ”
―
Barack Obama
