“It’s the founding ideals that the flag draped over my father’s coffin stand for."
Truth: His father was buried in Kenya, never served in the U.S. military. Which flag draped his father’s coffin? And what ideals does the flag that draped his father’s coffin in Kenya stand for?”
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Barack Obama
“When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president…the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy." President Obama, in conversation with Marilynne Robinson, in New York Review of Books”
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Barack Obama
“all the education and good intentions in the world couldn’t help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.”
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Barack Obama
“As she spoke, her voice never wavered; it was the voice of someone who has forced a larger meaning out of tragedy.
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Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
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Barack Obama
“Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future.”
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Barack Obama
“I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse.”
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Barack Obama
“Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.”
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Barack Obama
“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”
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Barack Obama
“The result is autobiographical, although whenever someone’s asked me over the course of these last three years just what the book is about, I’ve usually avoided such a description. An autobiography promises feats worthy of record, conversations with famous people, a central role in important events. There is none of that here.”
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Barack Obama
“the resilience they had both displayed, the same stubborn strength that had lifted them out of bad circumstances. Except in Auma I had also sensed a willingness to put the past behind her, a capacity to somehow forgive, if not necessarily forget.”
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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.”
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Barack Obama
“Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”
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Barack Obama
