“It’s going to take a while to rebuild manufacturing out here,” he said. “Ten years, minimum. But once we get the unions involved, we’ll have a base to negotiate from. In the meantime, we just need to stop the hemorrhage and give people some short-term victories. Something to show people how much power they have once they stop fighting each other and start going after the real enemy.” “And who’s that?” Marty shrugged. “The investment bankers. The politicians. The fat cat lobbyists.” Marty”
―
Barack Obama
“Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,”
―
Barack Obama
“Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
―
Barack Obama
“We must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.”
―
Barack Obama
“Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”
―
Barack Obama
“church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version of the same two questions. “Where’d you get that funny name?” And then: “You seem”
―
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
“I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family.”
―
Barack Obama
“In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”
―
Barack Obama
“In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes - and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”
―
Barack Obama
“perhaps that’s how any love begins, impulses and cloudy images that allow us to break across our solitude, and then, if we’re lucky, are finally transformed into something firmer.”
―
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.”
―
Barack Obama
“People with disabilities deserve the chance to build a life for themselves in the communities where they choose to live.”
―
Barack Obama