Barack Obama All Quotes and Sayings

**Barack Obama** (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Born: in Honolulu, Hawaii, The United States
Website: http://www.obamabook.com/
Twitter: BarackObama
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Nonfiction, Politics

Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of two previous New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

**“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things!”**
(Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

“Barack Obama All Quotes and Sayings”

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! We are the change that we seek!”
“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things!”
“Yes We Can!”
“We are the change we have been waiting for!”
“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope!”
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it!
“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress!”
“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America!”
“We don’t ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours!”
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition! It asks too little of yourself! And it will leave you unfulfilled!”
“It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds!”
“Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change!”
“Why can’t I just eat my waffle!”
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past!”
“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared!”
“You can’t let your failures define you! You have to let your failures teach you!”
“While we breathe, we will hope!”
“No one is pro-abortion!”
“You can put lipstick on a pig! It’s still a pig!”
“Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies!”
“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God! This is the true self! Every other identity is illusion!”
“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself!”
“I’ve lived too long with pain! I won’t know who I am without it!”
“All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I’m afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints!”
“Through others we become ourselves!”
“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are!”
“What we know matters but who we are matters more!”
“Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all!”
“You should never make fun of something that a person can’t change about themselves!”
“Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom!”
“But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid!”
“Change is never easy, but always possible!”
“I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers!”
“To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices! I need your help! And I will be your president, too!”
“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that Magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”
“There is no excuse for not trying!”
“Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness! No one deserves to be bullied!”
“Let me tell you something! I’m from Chicago! I don’t break!”
“What Washington Needs is Adult Supervision!”
“My little girls can break my heart! They can make me cry just looking at them eating their string beans!”
“To be known! To be heard! To have one’s unique identity recognized and seen as worthy! It was a universal human desire, I thought, as true for nations and peoples as it were for individuals!”
“Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable!”
“We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream!”
“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness!”
“I experienced failure and learned to buck up so I could rally those who’d put their trust in me! I suffered rejections and insults often enough to stop fearing them! In other words, I grew up—and got my sense of humor back!”
“The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education!”
“I’ve got daughters! Nine years old and six years old! First of all, I’m gonna teach them about values and morals! But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them PUNISHED with a baby!”
“The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education!”
“This shit would be really interesting if we weren’t in the middle of it!”
“A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself!”
“make a way out of no way”
“Either grab a drink and sit down with us or get the fuck out of here!”
“I’d met my share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons”
“Where there is no experience the wise man is silent!”
“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations!”
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost!”
“America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams!”
“It [is] that courage that Africa most desperately needs!”
“There’s nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man!!! to explain to them the meaning of manhood! And that’s a recipe for disaster!”
“Better to be strong,’ he [Lolo] said!!!’if you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong! But always better to be strong yourself!”
“Reading is important! If you know how to read then the whole world opens up to you”
“When things are bad,” Axe said, walking next to me as we left the December meeting, “no one cares that ‘things could have been worse!”
“I’m asking you to believe! Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ! ! ! I’m asking you to believe in yours!”
“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!”
“all the education and good intentions in the world couldn’t help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course!”
“This pleased Anyang, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man’s power and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man!”
“Have you ever noticed that if there’s a hard way and an easy way, you choose the hard way every time! Why do you think that is!”
“Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity – one set of truths didn’t negate the other! For war was contradiction, as was the history of America!”
“I’m so overexposed, I’m making Paris Hilton look like a recluse!”
“We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself!!!”
“Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing!”
“I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family!”
“It’s in the misery of some unnamed slum that the next killer virus will emerge!”
“When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us!”
“What I could not support was “a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics”!”
“Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work!”
“Don’t let your failures define you!”
“The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope!”
“There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter!”
“We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope! But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope!”
“Change won’t come from the top; Change will come from mobilized grassroots!”
“In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words! With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come!”
“You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want”! It is your turn now to change the world! Yes we can!”
“And then there was the unsettling fact that, despite whatever my mother might claim, the bullies, cheats, and self-promoters seemed to be doing quite well, while those she considered good and decent people seemed to get screwed an awful lot!”
“You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want”! It is your turn now to change the world! Yes we can!”
“This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change!”
“Through them, I resolved the lingering questions of my racial identity! For it turned out there was no single way to be Black; just trying to be a good man was enough!”
“I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society! After all if they are like us, then their struggles are our own! If we fail to help we diminish ourselves!”
“What makes a man is not the ability to have a child but having the courage to raise one!”
“How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage!”
“I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors!”
“A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence or a good piece of music! Everybody can recognize it! They say, ‘Huh! It works! It makes sense!”
“A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody! It’s what civilization was built on, guilt! A highly underrated emotion!”
“We are a people of improbable hope!”
“Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost; a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11!”
“Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models!”
“I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class!”
“My heart is filled with love for this country!”
“So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other!”
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well!”
“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it!”
“This is the moment we must come together to save this planet! Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands!”
“Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,”
“Beneath the layers of hurt, beneath the ragged laughter, I heard a willingness to endure! Endure—and make music that wasn’t there before!”
“For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies! So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled!”
“Illinois preschoolers were temporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk!”
“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!”
“We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost!”
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun!”
“In the end, that’s what this election is about! Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope!”
“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted!”
“Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters!”
“It was like – It was like Special Olympics or something!”
“I’m the President, but he’s The Boss!”
“Our values call upon us to care about the lives of people we will never meet!”
“The most effective debate answers, it seemed, were designed not to illuminate but to evoke an emotion, or identify the enemy, or signal to a constituency that you, more than anyone else on that stage, were and would always be on their side!”
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well!”
“Over time I’ve trained myself to take the long view, about how important it is to stay focused on your goals rather than getting hung up on the daily ups and downs!”
“The conviction that racism wasn’t inevitable may also explain my willingness to defend the American idea: what the country was, and what it could become!”
“When I was a kid I inhaled frequently! That was the point!”
“Two hundred and thirty-two years and they wait until the country’s falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!”
“Doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day!”
“This, I was coming to realize, was the nature of the presidency: Sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed!”
“I’m an old-fashioned guy! I believe in the Enlightenment, and reason, and logic, and you know, facts!”
“Change has come!”
“I had nothing to escape from except my own inner doubt!”
“The big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy !!! betrays a poverty of ambition!”
“I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career!”
“All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations!”
“Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture — hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess!”
“America, we have come so far! We have seen so much! But there is so much more to do!”
“God sees the world through the eyes of those most oppressed!”
“What had Frank called college! An advanced degree in compromise!”
“I like being president because i get a cool house”
“What matters is how well we have loved!”
“Look at yourself before you pass judgment! Don’t make someone else clean up your mess!”
“I screwed up!”
“Where once I’d felt the need to live up to his expectations, I now felt as if I had to make up for all his mistakes!”
“In return, I gave him a sounding board for his frustrations!”
“Go read a book, she would say! Then come back and tell me something you learned!”
“But it’s just that he is basically a very honest person! That makes him uncompromising sometimes!”
“The idea that our common humanity mattered more than our differences was stitched into my DNA!”
“trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people”
“Conservative or liberal, we are all constitutionalists!”
“They spend half those lives worrying about what white folks think!”
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! We are the change that we seek!”
“Whatever you do won’t be enough, I heard their voices say! Try anyway!”
“I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone–and that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom!”
“Strange how a single conversation can change you! Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect!”
“No one is exempt from the call to find common ground!”
“If you have something, then everyone will want a piece of it! So you have to draw the line somewhere! If everyone is family, no one is family! Your father, he never understood this, I think!”
“What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress!”
“People with disabilities deserve the chance to build a life for themselves in the communities where they choose to live!”
“Let us endure these storms!”
“White folks! The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first; I felt like a non-native speaker tripping over a difficult phrase!”
“In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, and then peek around the room! Nothing happened! No angels descended!”
“I don’t worry about the survival of the novel! We’re a storytelling species!”
“Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action! With enough actions, I could start to build power! Issues,”
“Biden was more succinct: “It’s fucking outrageous!”
“I’m getting the Nobel Peace Prize!” “That’s wonderful, honey,” she said, then rolled over to get a little more shut-eye!”
“I was tempted to exit my perch, make my way down the aisle, and smack the guy in the head!”
“Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference!”
“The trick is not caring that it hurts!”
“Please precede, Governor!”
“I found god in myself and I loved her / I loved her fiercely”
“I knew a time would come when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct!”
“We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt!”
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real! They are serious and they are many! They will not be met easily or in a short span of time! But know this, America — they will be met!”
“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!”
“We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect!”
“In the hands of the shrewd and the ruthless, chaos had proven a gift!”
“Joe looked at the name on Axe’s BlackBerry and then turned to me! “Who the hell is Sarah Palin!”
Confidence! The secret to a man’s success”
“McConnell raised his hand like a traffic cop and said, “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care!”
“Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed!”
“Chicago, a town that’s accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment!”
“I try never to get too high when things are going well! I try never to get too low when things are going poorly! I try to keep an even keel!”
“Inexhaustible!!!our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God!”
“We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together!”
“I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions!”
“I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes!”
“Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity—one set of truths didn’t negate the other! For war was contradiction, as was the history of America!”
“As I chewed on the gooey popcorn, looking out at the lake, calm and turquoise now, I tried to recall a more contented moment”
“Sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter!”
“None of These Will Come Easy!”
“My liberty depends on you being free, too!”
“What’s the trick! The man asks! The trick is not caring that it hurts!”
“Later, when I became more familiar with the narrower path to happiness to be found in television and the movies, I’d become troubled by questions!”
“To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear! Burdens”
“the world was shrinking, sympathies changing;”
“I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States! We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around congress!”
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works”

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