Quotes from Barack Obama

Maintaining this social compact, though, required trust. It required that we see ourselves as bound together

But at no stage in my political career had I made environmental issues my calling card. Not because I didn't consider them important but because for my constituents, many of whom were working-class, poor air quality or industrial runoff took a backseat to the need for better housing, education, healthcare, and jobs. I figured somebody else could worry about the trees.

Il denaro non è l'unica risposta, ma fa la differenza.

The circumstances, I felt, demanded it. The October jobs report, released three days after the election, was dismal: 240,000 jobs lost (revisions would later reveal that the true number was 481,000).

I began to understand the true nature of my adversary. I wasn't running against Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or even the Republicans. I was running against the implacable weight of the past; the inertia, fatalism, and fear it produced.

For the first time since its founding in 1949, NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter, agreeing that the armed attack on one of its members shall be considered an attack against them all. With justice at our backs and the world by our side, we drove the Taliban government out of Kabul in just over a month.

If I aspired to lead the free world, I decided, I'd have to make climate change a priority of my campaign and my presidency.

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.

Moments like this are rare. You think you may not be ready, that you'll do it at a more convenient time. But you don't choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you're willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.

But how? Climate change is one of those issues governments are notoriously bad at dealing with, requiring politicians to put in place disruptive, expensive, and unpopular policies now in order to prevent a slow-rolling crisis in the future. Thanks

We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.

They were actors in a rigged game, I decided, and I wanted no part of it.

Still, key Democratic interest groups—especially the big industrial unions—resisted any environmental measures that might threaten jobs for their members; and in polls we conducted at the start of my campaign, the average Democratic voter ranked climate change near the bottom of their list of concerns. Republican

observed that two weeks earlier, when the House Republicans and I had issued sharply contrasting budget proposals, with profound implications for the nation, the news had instead been dominated by talk of my birth certificate. I noted that America faced enormous challenges and big decisions; that we should expect serious debates and sometimes fierce disagreements, because that was how our democracy was supposed to work, and I was certain that we had it in us to shape a better future together.

History travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways.

Lewis and Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash.

What did have me worried by the end of the trip was less a particular issue than an overall impression: the sense that for a variety of reasons—some of our own making, some beyond our control—the hopeful tide of democratization, liberalization, and integration that had swept the globe after the end of the Cold War was beginning to recede. Older, darker forces were gathering strength, and the stresses brought about by a prolonged economic downturn were likely to make things worse.

Lord," I had written, "protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

At some basic level people were no longer seeing me, I realized, with all my quirks and shortcomings. Instead, they had taken possession of my likeness and made it a vessel for a million different dreams. I knew a time would come when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct.

Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman

important it is to stay focused on your goals rather than getting hung up on the daily ups and downs.

Senhor", eu tinha escrito, "protege minha família e a mim. Perdoa meus pecados, e me ajuda a evitar o orgulho e o desespero. Dá-me sabedoria para fazer o que é certo e justo. E faz de mim instrumento da Tua vontade.

I wanted to be neither a supplicant, always on the periphery of power and seeking favor from liberal benefactors, nor a permanent protester, full of righteous anger as we waited for white America to expiate its guilt. Both paths were well trodden; both, at some fundamental level, were born of despair. No, the point was to win.

Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.