“the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition.”
―
Barack Obama
“Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”
―
Barack Obama
“We will extend our arms to you[world] if you unclench your fists.”
―
Barack Obama
“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
―
Barack Obama
“For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.”
―
Barack Obama
“In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”
―
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.”
―
Barack Obama
“The boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets - loud congregations of teenage boys, teenage girls feeding potato chips to crying toddlers, the discarded wrappers tumbling down the block - all of it whispered painful truths.”
―
Barack Obama
“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”
―
Barack Obama
“I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I'm asking you to believe in yours."
Keeping faith with those who serve must always be a core American value and a cornerstone of American patriotism. Because America's commitment to its servicemen and women begins at enlistment, and it must never end.”
―
Barack Obama
“A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.”
―
Barack Obama
“Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one’s experiences hold for others,”
―
Barack Obama
“Illinois preschoolers were temporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk.”
―
Barack Obama
“I've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”
―
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
