Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Barack Obama
Barack Obama Quotes
824 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
The face of globalisation is contradictory. The internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change to communities. In all nations - including America - this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities - those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith. But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions between development and tradition.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
I believe Africa's progress will also depend on democracy, because Africans, like people everywhere, deserve the dignity of being in control of their own lives. We all know what the ingredients of real democracy are. They include free and fair elections, but also freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly. These rights are universal. […] And I have to proclaim, democracy is not just formal elections. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance. And I'm convinced that nations cannot realize the full promise of independence until they fully protect the rights of their people.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
New thinking. Unleashing growth that creates opportunity. Promoting development that lifts all people out of poverty. Supporting democracy that gives citizens their say. Advancing the security and justice that delivers peace. Respecting the human rights of all people. These are the keys to progress — not just in Africa, but around the world.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
You can create your own style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace your own sexuality. Think about an icon we just lost — Prince. He blew up categories. People didn't know what Prince was doing. … And folks loved him for it.
You need to have the same confidence. Or as my daughters tell me all the time, You be you, Daddy. … Sometimes Sasha puts a variation on it — "You do you, Daddy." … And because you're a black person doing whatever it is that you're doing, that makes it a black thing. Feel confident.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
Africa's progress will also depend on security and peace — because an essential part of human dignity is being safe and free from fear.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
This year let's all come together, Congress, the White House, businesses from Wall Street to Main Street, to give every woman the opportunity she deserves, because I believe when women succeed, America succeeds.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
The wall belongs to history. But we have history to make as well. And the heroes that came before us now call to us to live up to those highest ideals — to care for the young people who can't find a job in our own countries, and the girls who aren't allowed to go to school overseas; to be vigilant in safeguarding our own freedoms, but also to extend a hand to those who are reaching for freedom abroad. This is the lesson of the ages. This is the spirit of Berlin. And the greatest tribute that we can pay to those who came before us is by carrying on their work to pursue peace and justice not only in our countries but for all mankind.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
What an extraordinary achievement. What a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. What a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
I want to be very clear here — a politics that's based solely on tribe and ethnicity is a politics that's doomed to tear a country apart.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
The nature of not only politics but, I think, social change of any sort is that it doesn't move in a straight line, and that those who are most successful typically are tacking like a sailor toward a particular direction.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
Dropping bombs on someone to prove that you're willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness..
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
While we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes we can.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
The truth is, being an American is hard. Being part of a democratic government is hard. Being a citizen is hard. It is a challenge. It's supposed to be. There's no respite from our ideals. All of us are called to live up to our expectations for ourselves — not just when it's convenient, but when it's inconvenient. When it's tough. When we're afraid. The tension throughout our history between welcoming or rejecting the stranger, it's about more than just immigration. It's about the meaning of America, what kind of country do we want to be. It's about the capacity of each generation to honor the creed as old as our founding: E Pluribus Unum — that out of many, we are one.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes like that again. We must resolve to always speak out against hatred and bigotry in all of its forms — whether taunts against the child of an immigrant farmworker or threats against a Muslim shopkeeper. We are Americans. Standing up for each other is what the values enshrined in the documents in this room compels us to do -– especially when it's hard. Especially when it's not convenient. That's when it counts. That's when it matters — not when things are easy, but when things are hard.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think it's going to be hard — if we think it's hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season where they're all up. It's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. So we might as well do it now — pull off the Band-Aid; eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
As we do every time this year, Presidents and Prime Ministers converge on this great city to advance important work. But as leaders, we are not the most important people here today. It is the civil society leaders who, in many ways, are going to have the more lasting impact, because as the saying goes, the most important title is not president or prime minister; the most important title is citizen. It is citizens — ordinary men and women, determined to forge their own future — who throughout history have sparked all the great change and progress.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
I'd suggest that peace with justice begins with the example we set here at home, for we know from our own histories that intolerance breeds injustice. Whether it's based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation, we are stronger when all our people — no matter who they are or what they look like — are granted opportunity, and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and our sons.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
We toured Cape Coast Castle, a place for centuries where men, women, and children of this nation and surrounding areas were sold into slavery. I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African Americans, walking through those doors of no return, but then walking back those doors of return. It was a remarkable reminder that while the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
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.
Barack Obama
Source
Report...
Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right. It means seeing our foreign assistance as part of our national security, not something separate, not charity.
Barack Obama
1
...
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Barack Obama
Creative Commons
Born:
August 4, 1961
(age 62)
Bio:
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017.
Most used words:
people
america
country
nation
work
change
freedom
states
democracy
united
peace
time
american
government
rights
Barack Obama on Wikipedia
Barack Obama works on Wikisource
Barack Obama on Twitter
Barack Obama on YouTube
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Barack Obama Quotes
Barack Obama Short Quotes
Quotes about Barack Obama
American President Quotes
President Quotes
20th-century President Quotes
Related People
Hillary Clinton
American Politician
Donald Trump
American President
Bill Clinton
American President
Family
Michelle Obama
Spouse
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes