Quotes from Barack Obama

This was it, I thought to myself. My inheritance. I rearranged the letters in a neat stack and set them under the registry book. Then I went out into the backyard. Standing before the two graves, I felt everything around me—the cornfields, the mango tree, the sky—closing in, until I was left with only a series of mental images, Granny's stories come to life.

Conservatives may be right when they argue that the government should not try to determine executive pay packages. But conservatives should at least be willing to speak out against unseemly behavior in corporate boardrooms with the same moral force, the same sense of outrage that they direct against dirty rap lyrics.

What made it worse was the clueless attitude of the Wall Street executives whose collective asses we were pulling out of the fire. Just before I took office, for example, the leaders of most of the major banks had gone ahead and authorized more than a billion dollars in year-end bonuses for themselves and their lieutenants, despite having already received TARP funds to prop up their stock prices.

Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

Let's be honest. Sometimes art is dangerous, though. And that's why governments sometimes get nervous about art. But one of the things I truly believe is if you try to suppress the arts, then I think you are suppressing the deepest dreams and aspirations of the people.

When you get rid of the estate tax," he said, "you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.

I dropped to the ground and swept my hand across the smooth yellow tile. Oh, Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father's before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us.

If I say I will do something, I must do it. Otherwise, how will people know that my word is true?

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).

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.

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

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.