I decided to become a community organizer ... Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
Barack ObamaWe will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations
Barack ObamaIf you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill, other things they're spending money on, it may turn out that, it's just that they haven't prioritized health care.
Barack ObamaTheoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.
Barack ObamaThere are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people's imaginations. And in death, they become even larger. Now, I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable.
Barack ObamaWhen it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about. ... What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers, and durations of calls; they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content. ... If the intelligence committee actually wants to listen to a phone call they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.
Barack Obama