“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
―
Barack Obama
“What makes a man is not the ability to have a child but having the courage to raise one.”
―
Barack Obama
“Well, amigo … you can talk all you want about saving the world, but this city tends to eat away at such noble sentiments.”
―
Barack Obama
“Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one’s experiences hold for others,”
―
Barack Obama
“The people back home, they didn’t even know anyone else who had ridden in an airplane before. So they expected everything from him. ‘Ah, Barack, you are a big shot now. You should give me something. You should help me.’ Always these pressures from family. And he couldn’t say no, he was so generous. You”
―
Barack Obama
“But it’s just that he is basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes.”
―
Barack Obama
“the words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms...”
―
Barack Obama
“The most important thing you need to do [in this job] is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking.”
―
Barack Obama
“More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world--a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward. . . . .
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good.”
―
Barack Obama
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
―
Barack Obama
“Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess.”
―
Barack Obama
“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
“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
―
Barack Obama
“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,”
―
Barack Obama
“Like a tourist, I watched the range of human possibility on display, trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people I saw, looking for some opening through which I could reenter.”
―
Barack Obama