“When I see Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously. I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses.”
―
Barack Obama
“For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.”
―
Barack Obama
“All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.”
―
Barack Obama
“Cynicism is a choice, and hope is a better choice.”
―
Barack Obama
“I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.”
―
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
“In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes - and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”
―
Barack Obama
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”b”
―
Barack Obama
“You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”
―
Barack Obama
“For us to respond in that way to hateful speech... we empower the worst of us .. to create chaos around the world.”
―
Barack Obama
“But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”
―
Barack Obama
“Change won't come from the top, Change will come from mobilized grassroots.”
―
Barack Obama
“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”
―
Barack Obama
“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes....”
―
Barack Obama
