We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Values
For that is our unyielding faith – that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Faith
All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.
—Barack Obama
Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Freedom
I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Leadership
Three months is a lifetime in politics.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Politics
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Freedom
We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Excellence
This is the moment when 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.
—Barack Obama
Topics: World
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.”
—Barack Obama
Community colleges play an important role in helping people transition between careers by providing the retooling they need to take on a new career.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Career
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.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Libraries
America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes. It is this hope that has sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired than before.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
—Barack Obama
We have proved that the true strength of our nation comes not from the scale of our wealth but from the power of our ideals – opportunity, democracy, liberty and hope.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Hope
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.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Change
Today we’re seeing that climate change is about more than a few unseasonably mild winters or hot summers. It’s about the chain of natural catastrophes and devastating weather patterns that global warming is beginning to set off around the world.. the frequency and intensity of which are breaking records thousands of years old.
—Barack Obama
Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect. A year passes and you know you feel differently, but you’re not sure what or why or how, so your mind casts back for something that might give that difference shape: a word, a glance, a touch.
—Barack Obama
Only a handful of men and women leave an imprint on the conscience of a nation and on the history that they helped shape, …
—Barack Obama
Topics: Heroes
America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Hope
Americans … still believe in an America where anything’s possible—they just don’t think their leaders do.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we’re contributing to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe.
—Barack Obama
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, 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; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Wildlife
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.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Libraries
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Money
I also think the media’s presence simply raised the question: If the media could get to these places, why couldn’t the federal government?
—Barack Obama
Topics: Media
Instead of having a set of policies that are equipping people for the globalization of the economy, we have policies that are accelerating the most destructive trends of the global economy.
—Barack Obama
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Success
If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Values
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Woodrow Wilson American Head of State
- Abraham Lincoln American Head of State
- John C. Calhoun American Politician
- Dan Quayle American Head of State
- Hubert Humphrey American Head of State
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Hillary Rodham Clinton American Head of State
- Franklin D. Roosevelt American Head of State
- James A. Garfield American Head of State
- Ronald Reagan American Head of State
Leave a Reply