“Chicago, a town that’s accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment.”
―
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
“We will extend our arms to you[world] if you unclench your fists.”
―
Barack Obama
“We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt.”
―
Barack Obama
“For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
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Barack Obama
“There's a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from New York. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues over an issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument, blurted out: 'Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, I'm entitled to my own opinion." To which Moynihan frostily replied, "You are entitled to you own opinion, but you are not entitled to you own facts.”
―
Barack Obama
“Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up”
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Barack Obama
“In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.”
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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
“The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop.”
―
Barack Obama
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
―
Barack Obama
“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”
―
Barack Obama
