In Africa, you often see that the difference between a village where everybody eats and a village where people starve is government. One has a functioning government, and the other does not. Which is why it bothers me when I hear people say that government is the enemy. They don't understand its fundamental role.
Barack ObamaThe public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. Theyโre operated as holding pensโminiature jails, really. Itโs only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.
Barack ObamaDemocracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns in to universal, rather than religion-specific, values... it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. Now I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Barack Obama