“I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.”
―
Barack Obama
“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
―
Barack Obama
“For my grandfather, race wasn’t something you really needed to worry about anymore; if ignorance still held fast in certain locales, it was safe to assume that the rest of the world would be catching up soon.
―
Barack Obama
“America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.”
―
Barack Obama
“I only know what I have seen. What I have not seen doesn't make my heart heavy.”
―
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,”
―
Barack Obama
“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.”
―
Barack Obama
“I realized that abiding by his rules would cost me little, but to him, it would mean a lot. I recognized that sometimes he really did have a point, and in that insisting on getting my own way all the time without regard to his feelings or needs, I was in some way diminishing myself.
...In one form or another, it is what we all must go through in order to grow up.”
―
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
“Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today -- with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be.
―
Barack Obama
“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes....”
―
Barack Obama
“We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
―
Barack Obama
“She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America.They’re not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right
“You could see a man talking to himself as just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the front page of the daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate.”
―
Barack Obama
“I don’t think I really like myself. And I blame the Old Man for this.”
―
Barack Obama
“It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”
―
Barack Obama
