“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
―
Barack Obama
“I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.”
―
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
“Churches won't work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts. They'll talk a good game-a sermon on Sunday, maybe, or a special offering for the homeless. But if push comes to show, they won't really move unless you can show them how it'll help them pay their heating bill.”
―
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.”
―
Barack Obama
“Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power
―
Barack Obama
“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns in to universal, rather than religion-specific, values... it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.
Now I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”
―
Barack Obama
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
―
Barack Obama
“There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.”
―
Barack Obama
“right; maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape. An escape from poverty or boredom or crime or the shackles of your skin.”
―
Barack Obama
“A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It’s what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.”
―
Barack Obama
“Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed.”
―
Barack Obama
“He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like.”
―
Barack Obama
“Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future.”
―
Barack Obama
