“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
“America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.”
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Barack Obama
“Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power
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Barack Obama
“What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise.”
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Barack Obama
“You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.”
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Barack Obama
“This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man.”
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Barack Obama
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”
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Barack Obama
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
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Barack Obama
“I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
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Barack Obama
“We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
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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.”
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Barack Obama
“I've been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.”
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Barack Obama
“A nation that can't control its energy sources can't control its future.”
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Barack Obama
“education available to millions, government has helped”
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Barack Obama
