“People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.”
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Barack Obama
“The most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
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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
“We will not apologize for oour way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”
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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
“We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.”
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Barack Obama
“There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, with a set of concerns and demands that created barriers to friendship. When I wasn’t working, the weekends would usually find me alone in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books. I”
―
Barack Obama
“doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?
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Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
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Barack Obama
“If you’re going to do this work, Barack, you’ve got to stop worrying about whether people like you. They won’t.” Patronage,”
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Barack Obama
“What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics"
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Barack Obama
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”
―
Barack Obama
