Quotes from Barack Obama

Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried - it is not even past.

It was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.

I realized that justifying the past mattered less than planning what to do next.

First Family pays out of pocket for any new furniture, just as it does for everything else it consumes, from groceries to toilet paper to extra staff for a president's private dinner party.

And when it came to rigs, few were more impressive than the Deepwater Horizon. Roughly thirty stories tall and longer than a football field, this mobile, half-billion-dollar semisubmersible could function in water as deep as ten thousand feet and drill exploratory wells several miles deeper than that. Operating a rig this size cost around $1 million a day, but major oil companies considered the expense well worth it.

And as the struggle to pass healthcare legislation was also teaching me, the mere fact that Republicans had once supported a policy idea championed by one of their own did not mean they'd support THE SAME EXACT IDEA coming from a Democratic president.

people were moved by emotion, not facts.

We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

Human beings are members of a whole In creation of one essence and soul.

Human beings are members of a whole In creation of one essence and soul. Ben informed me that those lines were written by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa'adi, one of the most beloved figures in Iranian culture. We found this ironic, given how much of my time at UNGA was devoted to trying to curb Iran's development of nuclear weapons. Apparently, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad didn't share the poet's gentle sensibilities.

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

Leadership isn't just legislation, that it's a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone.

every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes

You could talk stuff to rattle an opponent, but that you should shut the hell up if you couldn't back it up.

You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learnings possible.

I held my mother's hand, making sure she was comfortable before she settled in to rest. Then I went back to the hotel room and cried.

In fact, the only difference between Trump's style of politics and theirs was Trump's lack of inhibition. He understood instinctively what moved the conservative base most, and he offered it up in an unadulterated form.

It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those who are struggling. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves.

I was the product of that young man's dreams; and as we pulled up to the makeshift holding area behind a wide stage, a part of me imagined myself not as the politician I had become but as one of those young people in the crowd, uncompromised by power, unencumbered by the need to accommodate men like Erdogan and Klaus, obliged only to make common cause with those chasing after a new and better world.

and while there were risks promoting what many considered a utopian quest, I told my team that in some ways that was the point; even modest progress on the issue required a bold and overarching vision.

it's hard not to admit the possibility that I was just desperate for another shot, like an alcoholic rationalizing one last drink.

They both disturbed and comforted me, those trees that looked as if they might uproot themselves and simply walk away, were it not for the knowledge that on this earth one place is not so different from another—the knowledge that one moment carries within it all that's gone on before.

But the vast majority of regulations Cass reviewed stood up to scrutiny—and by the end of my presidency, even Republican analysts would find that the benefits of our regulations outweighed their costs by a six-to-one margin.