“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
“For my grandfather, race wasn’t something you really needed to worry about anymore; if ignorance still held fast in certain locales, it was safe to assume that the rest of the world would be catching up soon.
―
Barack Obama
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth
―
Barack Obama
“It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried.”
―
Barack Obama
“I've got daughters. Nine years old and six years old. First of all, I'm gonna teach them about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them PUNISHED with a baby.”
―
Barack Obama
“We now live in a world where the most valuable skill you can sell is knowledge.”
―
Barack Obama
“If my father hadn’t exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening
―
Barack Obama
“Indeed, it's not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.”
―
Barack Obama
“I only know what I have seen. What I have not seen doesn't make my heart heavy.”
―
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
“For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.”
―
Barack Obama
“There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don’t think I really like myself. And I blame the Old Man for this.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.”
―
Barack Obama
