“Same thing with the distinction Johnnie made between good kids and bad kids—the distinction didn’t compute in my head. It seemed based on a premise that defied my experience, an assumption that children could somehow set the terms of their own development. I thought about Bernadette’s five-year-old son, scampering about the broken roads of Altgeld, between a sewage plant and a dump. Where did he sit along the spectrum of goodness? If he ended up in a gang or in jail, would that prove his essence somehow, a wayward gene … or just the consequences of a malnourished world? And”
―
Barack Obama
“You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”
―
Barack Obama
“What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress.”
―
Barack Obama
“There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.”
―
Barack Obama
“I had nothing to escape from except my own inner doubt.”
―
Barack Obama
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
―
Barack Obama
“And you won’t have to wake up at four in the morning,” she said, a point that I found most compelling.”
―
Barack Obama
“A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.”
―
Barack Obama
“As she spoke, her voice never wavered; it was the voice of someone who has forced a larger meaning out of tragedy.
―
Barack Obama
“This is the moment we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.”
―
Barack Obama
“I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer’s lobby.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“What makes a man is not the ability to have a child but having the courage to raise one.”
―
Barack Obama
“But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power... They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No New Taxes' or 'We are a Christian Nation.' In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this new vanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or you were against us. You had to choose sides.”
―
Barack Obama
“Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.”
―
Barack Obama
