Quotes from Barack Obama

If everyone is family, then no one is family.

It wasn't that people didn't know the difference between good and bad policy. It just didn't matter.

The power to shape budgets and guide policy was what we needed, and that power lay elsewhere.

Making Compassionate Decisions: The Role of Empathy in Decision Making READING TIME: 19 MINUTES "The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

The receptionist's salary, on the other hand, was taxed at almost twice that rate once FICA was included. From Buffett's perspective, the discrepancy was

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or time. We are the ones we've been waiting for change we seek.

the substance of patriotism mattered far more than the symbol.

I realized this was now part of my job: maintaining an outward sense of normalcy, upholding for everyone the fiction that we live in a safe and orderly world, even as I stared down the dark hole of chance and prepared as best I could for the possibility that at any given moment on any given day chaos might break through.

in a climate of constant technological change.

Once you became president, people's perceptions of you—even the perceptions of those who knew you best—were inevitably shaped by the media.

Between Republican attacks and Democratic complaints, I was reminded of the Yeats poem "The Second Coming": My supporters lacked all conviction, while my opponents were full of passionate intensity.

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

As for most politicians, money isn't about getting rich. In the Senate, at least, most members are already rich. It's about maintaining status and power; it's about scaring off challengers and fighting off the fear. Money can't guarantee victory—it can't buy passion, charisma, or the ability to tell a story. But without money, and the television ads that consume all the money, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose.

The fuss of being president, the pomp, the press, the physical constraints—all that I could have done without. The actual work, though? The work, I loved. Even when it didn't love me back.

It was hard to tell how lasting these trends would be. I told myself it was the nature of democracies—including America's—to swing between periods of progressive change and conservative retrenchment.

It's like moving-in day on a college campus, except a large percentage of the people involved are middle-aged, in suits, and, along with you, charged with running the most powerful nation on earth.

You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.

The men in the painting, the groundskeepers in the garden—they were guardians, I thought, the quiet priests of a good and solemn order. And I would tell myself that I needed to work as hard and take as much care in my job as they did in theirs.

Ultimately, tonight's not about the disagreements Governor Romney and I may have. It's what we have in common, beginning with our unusual names. Actually, Mitt is his middle name. I wish I could use my middle name." (Obama, Barack Hussein, D-Ill., U.S. president; Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner; New York, N.Y.; 10/18/2012.)

Still, I couldn't help but connect the two events and consider the human costs of the world's dependence on fossil fuels: the number of people who each day were forced to risk lungs, limbs, and sometimes their lives to fill our gas tanks and keep the lights on—and generate otherworldly profits for distant executives and shareholders. I

I grew comfortable enough [in the Oval Office] to put my feet up or sit on the desk ...

we'll shove it up their ass.

America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word "We." "We The People." "We Shall Overcome." "Yes We Can." That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

in the state capital. But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older, I suppose, for if you are paying attention