“Our immediate task, however, is the critical work of confronting the economic crisis. As I've said, we've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility; now we cannot afford half-measures, and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably bust. So we have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward.”
Barack Obama: "The President's News Conference With Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Untied Kingdom in London, England," April 1, 2009. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85953&st=&st1=
2009
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Barack Obama 1158
44th President of the United States of America 1961Related quotes
2000s, A Challenge to Overcome (November 2007)
Speech at Zurich University (September 19, 1946) ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html) ( http://www.peshawar.ch/varia/winston.htm).
Post-war years (1945–1955)
“We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to move forward.”
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_xcaBdBHf4
Speech following the Minnesota primary (3 June 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/obama.speech/index.html
2008
“But we can't go back. We can only go forward.”
Variant: One can never go back. One always has to move forward.
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Excerpts from a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants, 28 April 2005
2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)