“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”
―
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”
―
Barack Obama
“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.”
―
Barack Obama
“We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist. ”
―
Barack Obama
“I listened to a Republican colleague work himself into a lather over a proposed plan to provide school breakfasts to preschoolers. Such a plan, he insisted, would crush their spirit of self-reliance. I had to point out that not too many five-year-olds I knew were self-reliant, but children who spent their formative years to hungry to learn could very well end up being charges of the state.”
―
Barack Obama
“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,”
―
Barack Obama
“Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don’t like politics much,” she said. “Why’s that?” “I don’t know. People always end up disappointed.”
―
Barack Obama
“It's in the misery of some unnamed slum that the next killer virus will emerge.”
―
Barack Obama
“People with disabilities deserve the chance to build a life for themselves in the communities where they choose to live.”
―
Barack Obama
“For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
―
Barack Obama
“As she spoke, her voice never wavered; it was the voice of someone who has forced a larger meaning out of tragedy.
―
Barack Obama
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.”
―
Barack Obama
“I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.”
―
Barack Obama
