“in the state capital. But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older, I suppose, for if you are paying attention,”
―
Barack Obama
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
―
Barack Obama
“Our values call upon us to care about people we'll never meet.”
―
Barack Obama
“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”
―
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.”
―
Barack Obama
“Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.”
―
Barack Obama
“And it's safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way.”
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Barack Obama
“India, US to resume talks on investment pact; US President Barack Obama lauds reforms”
―
Barack Obama
“Where once I’d felt the need to live up to his expectations, I now felt as if I had to make up for all his mistakes.”
―
Barack Obama
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But”
―
Barack Obama
“In a...media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter...Information [can] become a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
―
Barack Obama
“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”
Truth: Obama later said, “This was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech and we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given. The point we were simply making was, is that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.”
―
Barack Obama