“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
―
Barack Obama
“The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.
But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.”
―
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
“It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”
―
Barack Obama
“We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.”
―
Barack Obama
“If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.”
―
Barack Obama
“Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.”
―
Barack Obama
“I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”
―
Barack Obama
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works”
―
Barack Obama
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.”
―
Barack Obama
“We went down into the dungeons where the captives were held. There was a church above one of the dungeons -- which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another. (Applause.) I was -- we walked through the "Door Of No Return." I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.”
―
Barack Obama
