“You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations - to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless.”
―
Barack Obama
“If my father hadn’t exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening
―
Barack Obama
“of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went”
―
Barack Obama
“Change will not happen if we wait for another person or another time. We are the person that we are waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
―
Barack Obama
“We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.”
―
Barack Obama
“The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…”
―
Barack Obama
“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”
―
Barack Obama
“What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
―
Barack Obama
“What's missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.”
―
Barack Obama
“Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture -- hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.”
―
Barack Obama
“It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those who are struggling. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves.”
―
Barack Obama
“perhaps that’s how any love begins, impulses and cloudy images that allow us to break across our solitude, and then, if we’re lucky, are finally transformed into something firmer.”
―
Barack Obama
“church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version of the same two questions. “Where’d you get that funny name?” And then: “You seem”
―
Barack Obama
“education available to millions, government has helped”
―
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
