“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.”
―
Barack Obama
“I'm also hard at work on plans for the Obama Library. And some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace, but I'd rather keep it in the United States.
Did anybody not see that joke coming? Show of hands.”
―
Barack Obama
“A woman named Helen Keller fought her way through long, silent darkness.
Though she could not see or hear,
she taught us to look at and listen to each other.
Never waiting for life to get easier,
she gave others courage to face their challenges.”
―
Barack Obama
“To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear. Burdens”
―
Barack Obama
“I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon”
―
Barack Obama
“Later, when I became more familiar with the narrower path to happiness to be found in television and the movies, I’d become troubled by questions.”
―
Barack Obama
“Chicago, a town that’s accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment.”
―
Barack Obama
“inexhaustible...our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.”
―
Barack Obama
“It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those who are struggling. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves.”
―
Barack Obama
“She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America.They’re not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right
“You could see a man talking to himself as just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the front page of the daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate.”
―
Barack Obama
“I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web. Sometimes I think that’s why I like accounting. All day, you are only dealing with numbers. You add them, multiply them, and if you are careful, you will always have a solution. There’s a sequence there. An order. With numbers, you can have control….”
―
Barack Obama
“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
―
Barack Obama
“Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”
―
Barack Obama
