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.
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
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.
What’s missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.
But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.
A nation that can’t control its energy sources can’t control its future.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.
it’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.
A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.
There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America.
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.
Over the last fifteen months we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been to fifty-seven states. I think, one left to go.
All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.
In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.
There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter.
The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.
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.
We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist.
It [is] that courage that Africa most desperately needs.
Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.
Let me tell your something. I’m from Chicago. I don’t break.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
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.
More than anything, it is that sense – that despite great differences in wealth, we rise and fall together – that we can’t afford to lose.
Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.
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.
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 identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t end there. At least that’s what I would choose to believe.
When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.
I’m an old-fashioned guy. I believe in the Enlightenment, and reason, and logic, and you know, facts.
America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.
Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.
A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.
Our values call upon us to care about people we’ll never meet.
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.
Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it’s bred indifference.
I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.
Our values call upon us to care about the lives of people we will never meet.
We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.
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.
Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for their father’s mistakes….
In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?
Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest.
The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future.
But do I think that our actions in anyway violate the War Powers Resolution, the answer is no.
So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.
In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.
The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.
Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don’t like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.
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.
While I understand the passions and the anger that arise over the death of Michael Brown, giving into that anger by looting or carrying guns, and even attacking the police, only serves to raise tensions and stir chaos.
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.’
I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks.
Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis recklessness on Wall Street did.
It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.
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.
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.
The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.
We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.
That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.
In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.
What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.
We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.
After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.
But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.
I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and, most importantly, they value their relationship with their doctor.
I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.
I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.
I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things – such as traditional marriage – that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.
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.
As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.
What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.
I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.
It’s not enough to train today’s workforce. We also have to prepare tomorrow’s workforce by guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education.
We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.
Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.