“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
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“You know, sometimes I'll go to an 8th-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just 8th grade ... An 8th-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!”
―
Barack Obama
“Ours is not the first generation to understand the dire need for health reform. And I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”
―
Barack Obama
“The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”
―
Barack Obama
“We must lift ourselves up, dust ourselfs off and begin the work of remaking America.”
―
Barack Obama
“Well, amigo … you can talk all you want about saving the world, but this city tends to eat away at such noble sentiments.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don’t like politics much,” she said. “Why’s that?” “I don’t know. People always end up disappointed.”
―
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
“doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”
―
Barack Obama
“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”
―
Barack Obama
“We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”
―
Barack Obama
“It was Jefferson, not some liberal judge in the sixties, who called for a wall between church and state—and if we have declined to heed Jefferson’s advice to engage in a revolution every two or three generations, it’s only because the Constitution itself proved a sufficient defense against tyranny.”
―
Barack Obama
“If you have something, then everyone will want a piece of it. So you have to draw the line somewhere. If everyone is family, no one is family. Your father, he never understood this, I think.”
―
Barack Obama