Quotes from Barack Obama

to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face;

The day was cold, the wind cutting, the sun a dim watermark on the gray sky.

At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do, it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Wanting to be in politics but not of it.

knew policy; I knew how to consume and process information. It took a while to figure out that my problem wasn't a lack of a ten-point plan. Rather, it was my general inability to boil issues down to their essence, to tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.

In 1980, the average CEO made forty-two times what an average hourly worker took home. By 2005, the ratio was 262 to 1.

began takings cabs

was ranked ninety-ninth in seniority, had yet to cast a vote, and didn't know where the restrooms were in the Capitol.

The government was taking money, jobs, college slots, and status away from hardworking, deserving people like us and handing it all to people like them—those who didn't share our values, who didn't work as hard as we did, the kind of people whose problems were of their own making.

Sometimes you were just screwed, and the best you could do was have a stiff drink—and light up a cigarette.

My head was crammed with too many facts and too few answers.

their minds were storing away a vision of life's possibilities and the beauty of the American landscape, just as mine once had; and that they might someday think back on our trips together and be reminded that they were so worthy of love, so fascinating and electric with life, that there was nothing their parents would rather do than share those vistas with them.

I don't think of him as being Black, really….I mean, he's so intelligent.

I'd put forward what I considered to be clear positions on all these issues during the campaign. But that had been from the cheap seats, before I had hundreds of thousands of troops and a sprawling national security infrastructure under my command. Any terrorist attack would now happen on my watch. Any American lives lost or compromised, at home or abroad, would weigh uniquely on my conscience. These were my wars now.

If I had a spare minute, the thank-you notes I wrote and the birthday calls I made would be directed not to them but to our volunteers and young staff out in the field.

There's only one thing you can count on, Mr. President," he said. "On any given moment in any given day, somebody somewhere is screwing up.

When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath.

His obtuseness reminded me that BP—previously known as British Petroleum—had started off as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company: the same company whose unwillingness to split royalties with Iran's government in the 1950s had led to the coup that ultimately resulted in that country's Islamic Revolution.)

about had made American life a hell of a lot better.

Once I got to college and became friends with fellow students and professors who were openly gay, though, I realized the overt discrimination and hate they were subject to, as well as the loneliness and self-doubt that the dominant culture imposed on them. I felt ashamed of my past behavior—and learned to do better.

This is it, I'd say to them finally. The point of it all. To have that rare chance, reserved for very few, to bend history in a better direction.

It is harder to end a war, than begin one.

Well, that's not even a question, Mr. President," Nancy said impatiently. "We've come too far to give up now." She thought for a moment. Then, as if testing out an argument she'd later use with her caucus, she added, "If we let this go, it would be rewarding the Republicans for acting so terribly, wouldn't it? We're not going to give them the satisfaction.

I was convinced that the logic of healthcare reform was so obvious that even in the face of well-organized opposition I could rally the American people's support. Other big initiatives—like immigration reform and climate change legislation—would probably be even harder to get through Congress; I figured that scoring a victory on the item that most affected people's day-to-day lives was our best shot at building momentum for the rest of my legislative agenda.