Barack Obama Quotes

If there's a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that's struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent.

We will not apologise for our way of life.

I believe when women succeed America succeeds!

But do I think that our actions in anyway violate the War Powers Resolution, the answer is no.

It's not appealing to deal with countries that express hatred towards us.

My little girls can break my heart. They can make me cry just looking at them eating their string beans.

No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla's captivity and death, ISIL is a hateful and abhorrent terrorist group whose actions stand in stark contrast to the spirit of people like Kayla.

I don't think there's a lot of dispute for this. You can argue that we didn't get everything done that we wanted to get done, but I can make a really strong argument, and I think prove, that by almost every measure the country's better off now than when I started.

We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language.

Sometimes we take somebody who's been in the trenches and fought the good fight and been steady for granted. Sometimes we act as if never having done something and not knowing what you're doing is a virtue.

We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.

The ideas of ancient Greece helped inspire America's founding fathers as they reached for democracy. Our revolutionary ideas helped inspire Greeks as they sought their own freedom.

After a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.

Citizenship means standing up for everyone's right to vote.***

Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

I try to explain to them about the aloha spirit. And it's that spirit that I am absolutely convinced is what America is looking for right now.

We still have sanctions on Iran for its violations of human rights, for its support of terrorism and for its ballistic missile program. And we will continue to enforce these sanctions vigorously. Iran's recent missile test, for example, was a violation of its international obligations.

It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to – to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.

Politics didn't lead me to working people. Working people led me into politics.

What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying 'Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.' Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.

Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.

Arne Duncan is done more to bring our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century than anyone else.

If the global economy is unresponsive to people who feel left behind, if inequality continues to grow, then we could end up seeing more and more of these divisions arise throughout advanced economies around the world.

Internationally, I have obviously been deeply concerned about how we fight the terrorist threat.

Both of our nations [America and Germany] were proud to join the Paris Climate Agreement which the world should work to implement quickly. Continued global leadership on climate in addition to increasing private investment and clean energy is gonna be critical to meeting this growing threat.

What we saw was that the Ferguson Police Department in conjunction with the municipality saw traffic stops, arrests, tickets as a revenue generator, as opposed to serving the community, and that it systematically was biased against African-Americans in that city who were stopped, harassed, mistreated, abused, called names, fined.

We've got to be able to distinguish between dangerous individuals who need to be incapacitated and incarcerated versus young people who are in an environment in which they are adapting, but if given different opportunities, a different vision of life, could be thriving the way we are. That's what strikes me. There but for the grace of God. And that, I think, is something that we all have to think about.

I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.

Jason Rezaian is coming home. A courageous journalist for The Washington Post who wrote about the daily lives and hopes of the Iranian people, he's been held for a year and a half. He embodies the brave spirit that gives life to the freedom of the press. Jason has already been reunited with his wife and mom.

It's time to end the hypocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy, and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down.

If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

America is an unlikely place - a country built on defiance of the odds; on a belief in the impossible. And I remind you of this because as you set out to live your own stories of success and achievement, it's now your turn to help keep it this way.

Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

The world doesn't just revolve around you. There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit.

I delivered a clear and forceful message that although we recognize Russia's intelligence gathering will sometimes take place even if we don't like it, there's a difference between that than either meddling with elections or going after private organizations or commercial entities, and that we're monitoring it carefully, and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.

perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.

Obviously [my daughters] - and Michelle - have made a lot of sacrifices on behalf of my cockamamie ideas, the running for office and things.

If [black] nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.

I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.

[The Americans] believe in the idea that a child shouldn't be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth.

Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined.

We were just at the beginnings of a recovery [in 2010]. And the, you know, whoever is president at that point is gonna get hit and his party's gonna get hit. That then means that suddenly you've got a redistricting in which a lot of state legislatures are now Republican. They draw lines that give a huge structural advantage in subsequent elections.

The amount of interaction, the amount of understanding that exists in your generation among people of different races and different creeds and different colors is unprecedented. And by the way, that goes - that cuts across party lines, that cuts across partisan lines.

We continue to urge China and other claimants to work constructively to resolve these disagreements, so that the South China Sea - which is so vital to the global economy - can be defined by commerce and cooperation.

If we can't meet with our friends, I don't know how we're going to lead the world in terms of dealing with critical issues like terrorism.

Who you are, what you are, does not change after you occupy the oval office. All it does is magnify who you are. All it does is shine a spotlight on who you are.