“We are Americans. Standing up for each other is what the values enshrined in the documents in this room compels us to do -– especially when it’s hard. Especially when it’s not convenient. That’s when it counts. That’s when it matters -- not when things are easy, but when things are hard.”

— Barack Obama

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)
Context: On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes like that again. We must resolve to always speak out against hatred and bigotry in all of its forms -- whether taunts against the child of an immigrant farmworker or threats against a Muslim shopkeeper. We are Americans. Standing up for each other is what the values enshrined in the documents in this room compels us to do -– especially when it’s hard. Especially when it’s not convenient. That’s when it counts. That’s when it matters -- not when things are easy, but when things are hard.

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Barack Obama 1158

44th President of the United States of America 1961

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“On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes like that again. We must resolve to always speak out against hatred and bigotry in all of its forms -- whether taunts against the child of an immigrant farmworker or threats against a Muslim shopkeeper. We are Americans. Standing up for each other is what the values enshrined in the documents in this room compels us to do -– especially when it’s hard. Especially when it’s not convenient. That’s when it counts. That’s when it matters -- not when things are easy, but when things are hard.”

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

We Will Not Be Terrorized (December 2015), Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

“The truth is, being an American is hard. Being part of a democratic government is hard. Being a citizen is hard. It is a challenge. It’s supposed to be. There’s no respite from our ideals. All of us are called to live up to our expectations for ourselves -- not just when it’s convenient, but when it’s inconvenient. When it’s tough. When we’re afraid. The tension throughout our history between welcoming or rejecting the stranger, it’s about more than just immigration. It’s about the meaning of America, what kind of country do we want to be. It’s about the capacity of each generation to honor the creed as old as our founding: “E Pluribus Unum” -- that out of many, we are one.”

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

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

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“Call it… joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done a good thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of the universe just seems especially apt.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

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Context: Call it… joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done a good thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of the universe just seems especially apt. It's nowhere near as flashy and intense as pleasure can be. Believe me! But it's got something going for it. Something that can make you do without pleasure, or even accept a lot of pain, to get it.

“Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what's hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.”

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“Because I don’t do things in halves, Mom. Especially when it comes to love.”

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“man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse”

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“Let us have Men, Men who will say a word to their souls and keep it — keep it not when it is easy, but keep it when it is hard”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

keep it when the storm roars and there is a white-streaked sky and blue thunder before, and one's eyes are blinded and one's ears deafened with the war of opposing things; and keep it under the long leaden sky and the gray dreariness that never lifts. Hold unto the last: that is what it means to have a Dominant Idea, which Circumstance cannot break. And such men make and unmake Circumstance.
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“Alliances are always weaker in peacetime; alliances tend to become hard and fast and strong when things are going badly… but when things are going well, cooperation is hard to achieve.”

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Source: National Security: Political, Military, Economic Strategies Decade Ahead, (1963), p. 678.

“Why is it so hard to do a thing Now, at the moment when one thinks of it.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Source: Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness), p. 92

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