“We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.”
―
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
“But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”
―
Barack Obama
“We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation.”
―
Barack Obama
“I'm also hard at work on plans for the Obama Library. And some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace, but I'd rather keep it in the United States.
Did anybody not see that joke coming? Show of hands.”
―
Barack Obama
“The man had received a chemical treatment, the article explained, to lighten his complexion. He had paid for it with his own money. He expressed some regret about trying to pass himself off as a white man, was sorry about how badly things had turned out. But the results were irreversible. There were thousands of people like him, black men and women back in America who’d undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person.
―
Barack Obama
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”
―
Barack Obama
“Our values call upon us to care about people we'll never meet.”
―
Barack Obama
“And if the high didn’t solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world’s ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism.”
―
Barack Obama
“Chicago, a town that’s accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment.”
―
Barack Obama
“Over the last fifteen months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been to fifty-seven states. I think, one left to go.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.”
―
Barack Obama
