“To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.”
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Barack Obama
“Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture -- hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.”
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Barack Obama
“In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people”
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Barack Obama
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
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Barack Obama
“It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those who are struggling. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves.”
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Barack Obama
“stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.
Barack Obama
At the Lincolm Memorial concert on National Mall in Washington, January 18, 2009, two days before his inauguration as US President.”
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Barack Obama
“of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went”
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Barack Obama
“We don't ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours.”
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Barack Obama
“We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist. ”
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Barack Obama
“I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic. ”
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Barack Obama
“We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.”
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Barack Obama
“Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one’s experiences hold for others,”
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Barack Obama
“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.”
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Barack Obama
“We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
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Barack Obama
“You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations - to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless.”
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Barack Obama
