Quotes from Barack Obama

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.

Thanks for sticking with this," Axe said, his voice choked up. I put my arm around him, feeling my own emotions swell. "This is why we do the work," I said. "This. Right here.

"There are things more important," he told me, "than getting reelected."

If your next-door neighbor's house is on fire, you don't want the fire department dispatcher asking whether it was caused by lightning or by someone smoking in bed before agreeing to send a fire truck; you just want the fire put out before it reaches your house.

The stubborn embrace of austerity by key European leaders, despite all of the contrary evidence, was more than a little frustrating.

My mother reinforced this affinity for the natural world. In the grandeur of its design—the skeleton of a leaf, the labors of an ant colony, the glow of a bleach-white moon—she experienced the wonder and humility that others reserved for religious worship, and in our youth, she'd lectured Maya and me about the damage humans could inflict when they were careless in building cities or drilling oil or throwing away garbage.

As much as Tim blamed himself during the next morning's postmortem, I recognized it as a systems failure

Duty compels us to care about people that we will never meet.

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

I promised to raise taxes on high-income Americans to pay for vital investments in education, research, and infrastructure. I promised to strengthen unions and raise the minimum wage as well as to deliver universal healthcare and make college more affordable.

I often think about that stretch of time spent sitting helplessly at the state dinner in Chile, contemplating the knife's edge between perceived success and potential catastrophe