“What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise.”
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Barack Obama
“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
“In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes - and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”
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Barack Obama
“We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.”
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Barack Obama
“For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.”
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Barack Obama
“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”
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Barack Obama
“You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want". It is your turn now to change the world. Yes we can!”
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Barack Obama
“Otherwise, though, the ambitions they had carried with them to Hawaii had slowly drained away, until regularity -- of schedules and pastimes ad the weather -- became their principal consolation.”
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Barack Obama
“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”
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Barack Obama
“Change will not happen if we wait for another person or another time. We are the person that we are waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
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Barack Obama
“It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks.”
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Barack Obama
“What Washington Needs is Adult Supervision.”
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Barack Obama
“Every single American — gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender — every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It’s a pretty simple proposition.”
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Barack Obama
“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
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Barack Obama
