“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
―
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
“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”
―
Barack Obama
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.”
―
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
“What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise.”
―
Barack Obama
“We will extend our arms to you[world] if you unclench your fists.”
―
Barack Obama
“We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.”
―
Barack Obama
“well as programs like the GI Bill that made a college education available to millions, government”
―
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
“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
“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
“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.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?
―
Barack Obama
