We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Excellence
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
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
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
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. … Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Wealth
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
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Success
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Woodrow Wilson American Head of State
Abraham Lincoln American Head of State
Dan Quayle American Head of State
Hubert Humphrey American Head of State
John C. Calhoun American Head of State
Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
Hillary Rodham Clinton American Head of State
Franklin D. Roosevelt American Head of State
Ronald Reagan American Head of State
John F. Kennedy American Head of State