“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
“The boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets - loud congregations of teenage boys, teenage girls feeding potato chips to crying toddlers, the discarded wrappers tumbling down the block - all of it whispered painful truths.”
―
Barack Obama
“well as programs like the GI Bill that made a college education available to millions, government”
―
Barack Obama
“I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic. ”
―
Barack Obama
“Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models.”
―
Barack Obama
“In return, I gave him a sounding board for his frustrations.”
―
Barack Obama
“ALMOST A DECADE HAS passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest”
―
Barack Obama
“A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It’s what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.”
―
Barack Obama
“This world is like a big classroom, and USA is the teacher, while other countries are the students, as one student tries to mess with the teacher, or does something really bad. The teacher shall teach him a nice lesson. Use your brain before you try to mess with the odds.”
―
Barack Obama
“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
―
Barack Obama
“What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics"
―
Barack Obama
“I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.”
―
Barack Obama
“This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change.”
―
Barack Obama
“If my father hadn’t exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening
―
Barack Obama