“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”
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Barack Obama
“faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts... [you] still experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone else experienced... the lines between sinner and saved [are] more fluid; the sins of those who come to church are not so different from the sins of those who don't... You [need] to come to church precisely because you [are] of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved you [need] to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away... that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world...”
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Barack Obama
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.”
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Barack Obama
“When I meet with world leaders, what’s striking — whether it’s in Europe or here in Asia…” — Barack Obama, mistakenly referring to Hawaii as Asia while holding a press conference outside Honolulu, Nov. 16, 2011”
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Barack Obama
“What's happened here, Sayid? There never used to be such begging."
"You are right," he said. "I believe they have learned this thing from those in the city. People come back from Nairobi or Kisumu and tell them, 'You are poor.' So now we have this idea of poverty. We didn't have this idea before. You look at my mother. She will never ask for anything. She has always something that she is doing. None of it brings much money, but it is something, you see. It gives her pride. Anyone could do the same, but many people here, they prefer to give up.”
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Barack Obama
“Conservatives may be right when they argue that the government should not try to determine executive pay packages. But conservatives should at least be willing to speak out against unseemly behavior in corporate boardrooms with the same moral force, the same sense of outrage that they direct against dirty rap lyrics.”
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Barack Obama
“This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it.”
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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.”
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Barack Obama
“Unfortunately, too many of our schools depend on inexperienced teachers with little training in the subjects they're teaching, and too often those teachers are concentrated in already struggling schools.”
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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
“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”
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Barack Obama
“At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”
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Barack Obama
“Conservative or liberal, we are all constitutionalists.”
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Barack Obama