“When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he’d expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry.”
―
Barack Obama
“It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks.”
―
Barack Obama
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
―
Barack Obama
“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”
―
Barack Obama
“The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth.”
―
Barack Obama
“We must lift ourselves up, dust ourselfs off and begin the work of remaking America.”
―
Barack Obama
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works”
―
Barack Obama
“What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress.”
―
Barack Obama
“The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves.”
―
Barack Obama
“Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess.”
―
Barack Obama
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.”
―
Barack Obama
“We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.”
―
Barack Obama
“Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.”
―
Barack Obama
“It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can”
―
Barack Obama
