Quotes About Impact

Part of the argument I made to Michelle before running for president was that if I pulled it off, kids all over the world would see themselves and their possibilities differently. And that alone would be worth it.

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

We just want to make sure you're treated like every other president," Von explained. "That's right," Buddy said. "See, you and the First Lady don't really know what this means to us, Mr. President. Having you here…" He shook his head. "You just don't know.

The cynics may be the loudest voices, but I promise you, they will accomplish the least.

Buddy said. "See, you and the First Lady don't really know what this means to us, Mr. President. Having you here…" He shook his head. "You just don't know.

if Abbas had been a younger man, more intent on making his mark than protecting himself from criticism.

the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done. It was a pretty convincing

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

You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.

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

But it would save somebody's mom out there, somewhere down the line. And that was worth fighting for.

Maybe nothing would come of my Cairo speech. Maybe the dysfunction of the Middle East would play itself out regardless of what I did. Maybe the best we could hope for was to placate men like Mubarak and kill those who would try to kill us. Maybe, as the Pyramids had whispered, none of it mattered in the long run. But on the only scale that any of us can truly comprehend, the span of centuries, the actions of an American president sixty-five years earlier had set the world on a better course.

Mr. President-Elect," she said, "this is your holy-shit moment.

To have that rare chance, reserved for very few, to bend history in a better direction.

What an extraordinary privilege to be able to make the world better

Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman. It has always been up to us.

just as Angela Merkel's willingness to absorb the tragic lessons of her own nation's past made a difference.

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

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

In contrast to his father, George W. Bush and members of his administration actively downplayed evidence of a warming planet and refused to engage in international efforts to curb greenhouse gases, despite the fact that for the first half of his presidency the United States ranked as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. As

Looking back, I sometimes ponder the age-old question of how much difference the particular characteristics of individual leaders make in the sweep of history—whether those of us who rise to power are mere conduits for the deep, relentless currents of the times or whether we're at least partly the authors of what's to come.

But if my own impact on Chicago was small, the city changed the arc of my life.

was nice to know, as one executive assured us, that without the Recovery Act "the entire solar and wind industry in the U.S. would've probably been wiped out." That didn't stop me from wondering how long we could keep championing policies that paid long-term dividends but still somehow resulted in us getting clobbered over the head. —

whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I'm reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences—a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.