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Barack Obama

Barack Obama Quotes

44th U.S. President

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Famous Barack Obama Quotes

“I’ve noticed this especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior, the bullying, and the putting people down is a sign of strength. I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is. It never has been. Real strength is about working hard and carrying a heavy load without complaining. Real strength is about taking responsibility for your actions and telling the truth, even when it’s inconvenient. Real strength is about helping people who need it and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“Then again, a president wasn’t a lawyer or an accountant or a pilot, hired to carry out some narrow, specialized task. Mobilizing public opinion, shaping working coalitions - that was the job. Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth - that was the bar I needed to clear.”

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Book:A Promised Land
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“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. 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. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“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.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“Here’s the thing, I would say. Most people, wherever they’re from, whatever they look like, are looking for the same thing. They’re not trying to get filthy rich. They don’t expect someone else to do what they can do for themselves. “But they do expect that if they’re willing to work, they should be able to find a job that supports a family. They expect that they shouldn’t go bankrupt just because they get sick. They expect that their kids should be able to get a good education, one that prepares them for this new economy, and they should be able to afford college if they’ve put in the effort. They want to be safe, from criminals or terrorists. And they figure that after a lifetime of work, they should be able to retire with dignity and respect.”

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Book:A Promised Land
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“With a certain talent for rhetoric, as well as an absolute certainty about the merits of my own views, I found that I could generally win these arguments, in the narrow sense of leaving my grandfather flustered, angry, and sounding unreasonable. But at some point, perhaps in my senior year, such victories started to feel less satisfying. I started thinking about the struggles and disappointments he had seen in his life. I started to appreciate his need to feel respected in his own home. 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 that in insisting on getting my own way all the time, without regard to his feelings or needs, I was in some way diminishing myself.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“I've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“It is up to all of us to fix this. It’s not gonna be because somebody comes and saves ya. You know, the most important office in this democracy is the citizen, the ordinary person, who says “nah, that’s not right.” And I do think one of the reasons that our commitment to democratic ideals has eroded is that we got pretty comfortable and complacent. It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are progressive, or say you are for social justice, or say you're for free speech, and not have to pay a price for it. And now we're at one of those moments where you know what, it's not enough just to say you’re for something, you may actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit. So yeah, if you're a law firm being threatened, you might have to say, OK, we will lose some business because we’re gonna stand for a principle. If you are a university, you may have to say, figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion? If not, and you're just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, well, that's why we got this big endowment. We'll stand up for what we believe in and then we'll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment and we'll give up the extra wing, or the fancy gymnasium, we can delay that for a couple years because, you know, academic freedom might be a little more important. For most of human history and to this day in most places in the world, there is a cost to challenging the powers that be, particularly if they're abusing that power. And I’ve noticed this among some wealthier folks who, you know, after George Floyd, they were right there and a bunch of companies were talking about how they cared about diversity and they wanted to do this and they were all for that and they are mute right now. But what that tells me is it was OK when it was cool and trendy, and when it’s not, eh, not so much. And that, I think, is what we have to… each of us has to examine in our own hearts, is, alright, we say we're for equality, are we willing to fight for it, are we gonna risk something for it. We say that we’re for rule of law--are we going to stick to that when it’s tough, not when it’s easy. We believe in freedom of speech. Do we stand up for freedom of speech when the other person talking is saying stuff that infuriates us and is wrong and hurtful. Do we still believe in it?”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“I started thinking about the struggles and disappointments he had seen in his life. I started to appreciate his need to feel respected in his own home. I realized that abiding by his rules would cost me little, but for him it would mean a lot. I recognized that sometimes he really did have a point, and that in insisting on getting my own way all the time, without regard to his feeling s or needs, I was in some way diminishing myself.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“By these standards at least, it sometimes appears that Americans today value nothing so much as being rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“And then, on September 11, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.”

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Book:Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
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“faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts... [you] still experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone else experienced... the lines between sinner and saved [are] more fluid; the sins of those who come to church are not so different from the sins of those who don't... You [need] to come to church precisely because you [are] of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved you [need] to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away... that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world...”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“Implicit … in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad. ... A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together…”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together, but for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, argument, and persuasion which allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices – not only about the means to our ends, but also the ends themselves.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper - that makes this country work.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“And there was the time Paul McCartney serenaded my wife with “Michelle.” She laughed, a little embarrassed, as the rest of the audience applauded, and I wondered what Michelle’s parents would have said back in 1965, the year the song came out, if someone had knocked on the door of their South Side home and told them that someday the Beatle who wrote it would be singing it to their daughter from a White House stage.”

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Book:A Promised Land
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“In other words, FDR understood that to be effective, governance couldn't be so antiseptic that it set aside the basic stuff of politics: You had to sell your program, reward supporters, punch back against opponents, and amplify the facts that helped your cause while fudging the details that didn't. I found myself wondering whether we'd somehow turned a virtue into a vice; whether, trapped in my own high-mindedness, I'd failed to tell the American people a story they could believe in; and whether having ceded the political narrative to my critics, I was going to be able to wrest it back.”

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Book:A Promised Land
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“At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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