Quotes from Barack Obama

I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone--and that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.

Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect.

The people back home, they didn't even know anyone else who had ridden in an airplane before. So they expected everything from him. 'Ah, Barack, you are a big shot now. You should give me something. You should help me.' Always these pressures from family. And he couldn't say no, he was so generous. You

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

the worlds that they thought they'd left behind reclaimed each of them, I occupied the place where their dreams had been.

If you have something, then everyone will want a piece of it. So you have to draw the line somewhere. If everyone is family, no one is family. Your father, he never understood this, I think.

that archetype is a closed man. Your inner self is forever secretive and unknown—stoic, silent, not revealing of your feelings.

What's certain is that I don't need the stress.

Sometimes you can't worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.

there are people in the world who think only about themselves. They don't care what happens to other people so long as they get what they want. They put other people down to make themselves feel important. "Then there are people who do the opposite, who are able to imagine how others must feel, and make sure that they don't do things that hurt people.

Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican Party—xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks—were finding their way to center stage.

if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism. That

This is what separates even the most liberal writers from their conservative counterparts—the willingness to flay politicians on their own side.)

It was Jefferson, not some liberal judge in the sixties, who called for a wall between church and state—and if we have declined to heed Jefferson's advice to engage in a revolution every two or three generations, it's only because the Constitution itself proved a sufficient defense against tyranny.

Let us endure these storms.

White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first; I felt like a non-native speaker tripping over a difficult phrase.

There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, with a set of concerns and demands that created barriers to friendship. When I wasn't working, the weekends would usually find me alone in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books. I

In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.

I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.

Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues

Biden was more succinct: "It's fucking outrageous.

I'm getting the Nobel Peace Prize." "That's wonderful, honey," she said, then rolled over to get a little more shut-eye.

America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not play a great part in the world," Roosevelt would argue. "It must play a great part. All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.

Have I told you that they are all part of you? Have I told you that you are part of them and that you are the future?