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: Focus, Goal, Wealth
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
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
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
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.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Government, Welfare
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
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 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
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
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
Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.
—Barack Obama
Topics: War
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
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
In the end, … that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?
—Barack Obama
Topics: Politics
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
You know, my faith is one that admits some doubt.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Faith
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
Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Faith
Americans … still believe in an America where anything’s possible—they just don’t think their leaders do.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
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
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
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
That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—or at least, most of the time.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
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
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
Three months is a lifetime in politics
—Barack Obama
Topics: Politics
The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or circumstance decides life’s big winners and losers, or whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Americans
We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
—Barack Obama
Topics: Excellence
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Woodrow Wilson American Head of State
- Abraham Lincoln American Head of State
- John C. Calhoun American Head of State
- 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
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