“I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”

— Barack Obama

Circulated in "A Coil of Rage" http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/coilofrage.asp, a 2011 mass e-mail attributing several fabricated quotations to Obama.
Obama actually wrote, in Dreams from My Father, p. 220:
Yes, I'd seen weakness in other men — Gramps and his disappointments, Lolo [my adoptive father] and his compromise. But these men had become object lessons for me, men I might love but never emulate, <span style="color:gray">white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.</span>
Misattributed

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Barack Obama 1158

44th President of the United States of America 1961

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“I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”

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