“In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes - and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”
―
Barack Obama
“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
―
Barack Obama
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”b”
―
Barack Obama
“Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess.”
―
Barack Obama
“The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“inexhaustible...our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.”
―
Barack Obama
“It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried.”
―
Barack Obama
“A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.”
―
Barack Obama
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.”
―
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
“It [is] that courage that Africa most desperately needs.”
―
Barack Obama
“If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works”
―
Barack Obama
“It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks.”
―
Barack Obama
