Barack Obama/Quotes

Quotes by Barack Obama

"I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war."

—Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002)

"A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'"

—"The Candidate" in The New Yorker (31 May 2004)

"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. ... Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."

—Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)

"[...] [W]e've been divided for so long, we've been arguing for so long, a lot of times about things that aren't even worth arguing about, and ignoring the things that we should be doing to make the next generation have a better life — that I think people are hungry for a new politics, they're hungry for change, and that's why I decided to run for President of the United States.

—Speech in Keehi Lagoon Beach Park, Hawaii (8 August 2008)

"In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long."

—Election victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois (4 November 2008)

"I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That's why NATO continues to be indispensable. That's why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries."

—Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway (9 December 2009)

"My experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions."

—I would have fired BP chief by now, Obama says (msnbc.com, June 8, 2010)

"First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination."

—Remarks at a Dedication Ceremony for the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial (October 2011)

"As one former prisoner put it in speaking to his fellow citizens, 'Politics is your job. It’s not only for [the] politicians.' And we have an expression in the United States that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen -- not President, not Speaker, but citizen."

—Remarks by President Obama at the University of Yangon, Rangoon, Burma (19 November 2012)

"[...] [Y]ou'll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

—Commencement Address at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (5 May 2013)