“I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.”
―
Barack Obama
“Every single American — gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender — every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It’s a pretty simple proposition.”
―
Barack Obama
“To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”
―
Barack Obama
“To the furniture worker's child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president -- that's the future we hope for. That's the vision we share. That's where we need to go -- forward”
―
Barack Obama
“The Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go out to Africa and we’re going to start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so that they can learn what a wonderful country America is. And this young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country."
―
Barack Obama
“Elle était jolie, Joyce, avec ses yeux verts, sa peau de miel et sa moue boudeuse. (...) Un jour je lui demandais si elle allait à la réunion de l'Association des étudiants noirs. Elle me lança un drôle de regard, puis elle secoua la tête (...): — Je ne suis pas noire, me répondit-elle. Je suis multiraciale. (...) Pourquoi voudrais-tu que je choisisse entre [mon père italien et ma mère africaine-indienne] ? (...) Ce ne sont pas les Blancs qui veulent me faire choisir, (...) ce sont les Noirs.”
―
Barack Obama
“A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.”
―
Barack Obama
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
―
Barack Obama
“The most important thing you need to do [in this job] is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking.”
―
Barack Obama
“When I see Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously. I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses.”
―
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
“So secure was his power that rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to cut whites and Hispanics into the action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and among people who preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise.”
―
Barack Obama
“I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.”
―
Barack Obama
“We now live in a world where the most valuable skill you can sell is knowledge.”
―
Barack Obama
