“Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost; a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.”
―
Barack Obama
“I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”
―
Barack Obama
“White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first; I felt like a non-native speaker tripping over a difficult phrase.”
―
Barack Obama
“Setiap strategi untuk mengurangi kemiskinan antargenerasi harus dipusatkan pada pekerjaan, bukan pada kesejahteraan--bukan hanya karena pekerjaan itu memberikan kebebasan dan pendapatan, melainkan juga karena pekerjaan itu mendatangkan kedisiplinan, struktur, harga diri, dan kesempatan untuk berkembang dalam kehidupan masyarakat.”
―
Barack Obama
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”b”
―
Barack Obama
“I listened to a Republican colleague work himself into a lather over a proposed plan to provide school breakfasts to preschoolers. Such a plan, he insisted, would crush their spirit of self-reliance. I had to point out that not too many five-year-olds I knew were self-reliant, but children who spent their formative years to hungry to learn could very well end up being charges of the state.”
―
Barack Obama
“education available to millions, government has helped”
―
Barack Obama
“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”
―
Barack Obama
“I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon”
―
Barack Obama
“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
―
Barack Obama
“Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up”
―
Barack Obama
“I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.”
―
Barack Obama
“I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
―
Barack Obama
