xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

“I'm deeply saddened by a sense that whites are still superior in this country, in some sense, that if you sit at a restaurant, they're served before a Kenyan is served. If you go through customs, a white person is going to follow orders that "all people are to be treated the same."”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

.. Said during a visit to Kenya in the late 1980s or early 1990s, recorded in the 20-minute documentary "A Journey In Black And White" by WeSearchr, as reported and quoted in "Documentary Of Young Obama’s Visit To Kenya Is Set To Be Released" http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/documentary-of-young-obamas-visit-to-kenya-is-set-to-be-released/ by Alex Pfeiffer, The Daily Caller (19 September 2016) 1980s

“We know that our faith sometimes has been used as a wedge to divide us, but we also know that with a big God, with a loving and forceful God, if we unite in his name, we can finish his work on Earth. In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. With a uniting faith, with a God powerful enough to empower us, we can take those bullets out.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2007

“Of course, no government, no nation, can meet this challenge alone. Everybody has a responsibility. Every nation can take action. Modern anti-trafficking laws must be passed and enforced and justice systems must be strengthened. Victims must be cared for. […] And more broadly, as nations, let’s recommit to addressing the underlying forces that push so many into bondage in the first place. With development and economic growth that creates legitimate jobs, there’s less likelihood of indentured servitude around the globe. A sense of justice that says no child should ever be exploited, that has to be burned into the cultures of every country.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)

“2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

“I’m not a particularly ideological person. There’s things, some values I feel passionately about.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

At Seattle fundraiser, 24 November 2013. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/obama-ideology-100328.html 2013

“Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism; it is an important part of promoting peace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

“This is the land of the free, and it always will be. As Americans, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us. But we've also long recognized, as our Founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities. Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government of, and by, and for the people. We are responsible for each other.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President and the Vice President on Gun Violence, 2013-01-16, January 16, 2013 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/16/remarks-president-and-vice-president-gun-violence, 2013

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

“Your experience cautions that progress is neither easy nor quick.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

“My fellow Americans, the city of Miami is only 200 miles or so from Havana. Countless thousands of Cubans have come to Miami -- on planes and makeshift rafts; some with little but the shirt on their back and hope in their hearts. Today, Miami is often referred to as the capital of Latin America. But it is also a profoundly American city -– a place that reminds us that ideals matter more than the color of our skin, or the circumstances of our birth; a demonstration of what the Cuban people can achieve, and the openness of the United States to our family to the South. Todos somos Americanos.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

“The reason is not simply because of my opinion of him. It is because it is unimaginable that you can stop the civil war there when the overwhelming majority of people in Syria consider him to be a brutal, murderous dictator.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama suggesting Bashar al-Assad must leave office to end the Syrian Civil War https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/19/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-trudeau-canada-after (19 November 2015) 2015

“I'm LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

quoted by David Mendell. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/25/obama-im-lebron-baby-i-ca_n_53563.html 2004

“The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama and Mrs. Obama in Town Hall with Youth of Northern Ireland, Belfast Waterfront, Belfast, Northern Ireland (17 June 2013)
2013

“Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002).
2000-03

“Societies evolve based on new understandings and new science and new appreciation of who we are.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

“Whenever I travel the world, from Europe to Africa, South America to Southeast Asia, one of the things I most enjoy doing is meeting young men and women like you. It’s more fun than being in a conference room. And it’s also more important -- because you are the young leaders who will determine the future of this country and this region. So I’m going to keep my remarks short at the top, because I want to take as many questions and comments from you.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

“For decades, this vision stood in sharp contrast to life on the other side of an Iron Curtain. For decades, a contest was waged, and ultimately that contest was won -- not by tanks or missiles, but because our ideals stirred the hearts of Hungarians who sparked a revolution; Poles in their shipyards who stood in Solidarity; Czechs who waged a Velvet Revolution without firing a shot; and East Berliners who marched past the guards and finally tore down that wall. Today, what would have seemed impossible in the trenches of Flanders, the rubble of Berlin, or a dissident’s prison cell -- that reality is taken for granted. A Germany unified. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe welcomed into the family of democracies. Here in this country, once the battleground of Europe, we meet in the hub of a Union that brings together age-old adversaries in peace and cooperation. The people of Europe, hundreds of millions of citizens -- east, west, north, south -- are more secure and more prosperous because we stood together for the ideals we share. And this story of human progress was by no means limited to Europe. Indeed, the ideals that came to define our alliance also inspired movements across the globe among those very people, ironically, who had too often been denied their full rights by Western powers. After the Second World War, people from Africa to India threw off the yoke of colonialism to secure their independence. In the United States, citizens took freedom rides and endured beatings to put an end to segregation and to secure their civil rights. As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies, and Asian nations showed that development and democracy could go hand in hand.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

“OK, everybody, I got to get to Star Wars.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"Obama cuts off press conference to go see 'Star Wars'" http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/263757-obama-cuts-off-press-conference-to-go-see-star-wars, The Hill (18 December 2015) 2015

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama: 'If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon' http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/03/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon-118439, Politico (23 March 2012) 2012