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Barack Obama served as the 44th US President between 2009 and 2017, having the distinction of being the first African-American to hold that office. Before that, he had served as a state senator in Illinois from 1997 to 2004 and then as US Senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008.
Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a Kenyan father and American mother. At high school, Obama proved himself an excellent basketball player, as well as being academically talented.
High school was followed by two years at the Occidental College in Los Angeles and then a political science degree course at Columbia University in New York. Having decided on a career in law, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1991.
Barack Obama achieved the exalted position of President, not through luck but by having a strong desire to help his fellow human beings. He dreamed of the day when all Americans would be equal, free from poverty, and able to enjoy equal opportunities.
Obama’s eagerness to work with disadvantaged people and the communities they lived in took him to Chicago, where he organized various community projects. While in Chicago, he worked as a civil rights lawyer and also as a lecturer and later professor at the Law School of the University of Chicago.
He gained a reputation for fairness and hard work. He often expressed his belief that nothing worthwhile can is achievable without hard work and determination. Obama is a compassionate man who wants a peaceful world where everyone can achieve their potential.
He realized that he could promote these aims more effectively through a career in public service, and in 1996 Obama took his first step into politics by running for a seat in the Illinois State Senate. He won the seat and held it until 2004. During his time as a state senator, he supported and also initiated several reforms that helped poorer people. One of these reforms was the expansion of health care services.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama
Obama was opposed to George W Bush’s involvement in the Iraq War. The war went ahead, and Obama felt inspired to seek a seat in the US Senate. In the election, he gained the largest majority ever seen in Illinois. As a Senator, he spoke out against weapons of mass destruction, supported both the development of renewable energy and improved benefits for veterans. He is seen as a man of principle who faces problems and issues head-on.
My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t end there. At least that’s what I would choose to believe.
Barack Obama
He stood for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election, beating Hilary Clinton. He went on to win the Presidency against John McCain of the Republican Party. Re-election followed in 2012. During his two terms as President, Obama cut taxes, overhauled the US’s foreign policy, and ordered the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. He also introduced his health care initiative (‘Obamacare’) and promoted environmental awareness.
Barack Obama Quotes
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.
Barack Obama
When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk.
Barack Obama
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
Barack Obama
I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.
Barack Obama
We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.
Barack Obama
Change is never easy, but always possible.
Barack Obama
My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don’t want to just be the president. You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president.
Barack Obama
The cynics may be the loudest voices – but I promise you, they will accomplish the least.
Barack Obama
This country is ready for a transformative politics of the sort that John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt represented.
Barack Obama
You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.
Barack Obama
I don’t know exactly what makes somebody ready to be president. It’s not clear that JFK was ‘ready’ to be president, it’s not clear that Harry Truman, when he was elevated, was ‘ready,’ and yet, somehow, some people respond and some people don’t. My instinct is that people who are ready are folks who go into it understanding the gravity of their work, and are able to combine vision and judgment.
Barack Obama
Nothing in life that’s worth anything is easy.
Barack Obama
Well, there are a lot of things I think I can accomplish, but two things I know. The first is, when I raise my hand and take that oath of office, there are millions of kids around this country who don’t believe that it would ever be possible for them to be president of the United States. And for them, the world would change on that day. And the second thing is, I think the world would look at us differently the day I got elected, because it would be a reaffirmation of what America is, about the constant perfecting of who we are. I think I can help repair the damage that’s been done.
Barack Obama
We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.
Barack Obama
Too many times, after the election is over and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.
Barack Obama
In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?
Barack Obama
I’m running for president because the time for the can’t-do, won’t-do, won’t-even-try style of politics is over. It’s time to turn the page.
Barack Obama
If you run you stand a chance of losing, but if you don’t run you’ve already lost.
Barack Obama
I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other.
Barack Obama
The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room, and then to start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved.
Barack Obama
I actually believe my own rhetoric.
Barack Obama
I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.
Barack Obama
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office.
Barack Obama
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.
Barack Obama
I do have confidence that we’re gonna be able to get it right. But it’s not gonna be overnight.
Barack Obama
Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.
Barack Obama
I always felt that a president is accountable for making the best decisions, but that there are going to be a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way. And as I said recently, this is still a human enterprise and these are big, tough, complicated problems. Somebody noted to me that by the time something reaches my desk, that means it’s really hard. Because if it were easy, somebody else would have made the decision and somebody else would have solved it.
Barack Obama
If you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like or who you love.
Barack Obama
I do think in Washington it’s a little bit like American Idol, except everybody is Simon Cowell. Everybody’s got an opinion. And, you know, obviously, at the inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country. But that lasted about a day.
Barack Obama
Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.
Barack Obama
Well, I had a habit of praying every night, before I go to bed. I pray all the time now. Because I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate and I need guidance all the time.
Barack Obama
We are the change we have been waiting for.
Barack Obama
Look, you know, when you’re in this job, I think, uh—every president who’s had it is constantly humbled by the degree to which there are a lot of issues out there, and the notion that one person alone can solve all these problems—I think you’re cured of that illusion very quickly.
Barack Obama
We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer – our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation.
Barack Obama
After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, ‘Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo’s birthday!’ And then Sasha added, ‘Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.’ So it’s good to have kids to keep things in perspective.
Barack Obama
Michelle’s like Beyoncé in that song. ‘Let me upgrade ya!’ She upgraded me.
Barack Obama
I don’t think anything prepares you for the presidency.
Barack Obama
We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up.
Barack Obama
Exercise every day. Seeing my family. Keeping things in perspective. Reading history. Reminding yourself that this is a long-term proposition and you’re not going to get everything exactly right, but hopefully, if you’re moving things in the right trajectory, that things usually work out.
Barack Obama
What Washington needs is adult supervision.
Barack Obama
The worst thing about being president is all the noise, all the political games—you know, it can be like a hall of mirrors, where just a few people are talking to each other and never breaking out of it. And Michelle is very good at making me focus not on the immediate orbit that we’re in but what’s going on outside of it.
Barack Obama
Where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.
Barack Obama
Let’s be clear here. Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken. Seven presidents have failed up until this point.
Barack Obama
You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.
Barack Obama
You know, we live in history. And it’s complicated. And things aren’t always, you know, completely clean.
Barack Obama
When times get tough, we don’t give up. We get up.
Barack Obama
You know, this is a town where once a screw-up happens, people can’t just say, ‘OK, that was a screw-up and let’s fix it.’ There has to be, you know, two weeks’ worth of cable chatter about it.
Barack Obama
We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.
Barack Obama
There’s got to be a sense sometimes that we’re willing to rise above our particular interests, our particular ideas, in order to get things done. Right now, that culture has, I think, broken down over the last several years, and one of my jobs over the next three years is to try to see if we can revive that.
Barack Obama
We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.
Barack Obama
The one thing I’m clear about is that I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. And I—and I believe that.
Barack Obama
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
Barack Obama
When your poll numbers drop, you’re an idiot. When your poll numbers are high, you’re a genius. If my poll numbers are low, then I’m cool and cerebral and cold and detached. If my poll numbers are high, well, ‘He’s calm and reasoned.’
Barack Obama
Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,’ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‘Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.
Barack Obama
My point is the easiest thing to do in politics is to point fingers, to figure out who to blame for something, or to make people afraid of things. That’s the easiest way to get attention. That’s what reporters will report on. You call somebody a name, you say, ‘Look what a terrible thing they’ve done, and they’re going to do more terrible things to you if you don’t watch out.’
Barack Obama
The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.
Barack Obama
Let’s acknowledge that democracy has always been messy. Let’s not be overly nostalgic.
Barack Obama
The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.
Barack Obama
We—I’ve got a whole bunch of portraits of presidents around here, starting with Teddy Roosevelt, who tried to do [health care reform] and didn’t get it done. The reason that it needs to be done is not its effect on the presidency. It has to do with how it’s going to affect ordinary people who right now are desperately in need of help.
Barack Obama
In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.
Barack Obama
People don’t progress in a straight line. Countries don’t progress in a straight line.
Barack Obama
We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn’t do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.
Barack Obama
As I’ve found out after a year in the White House, changing this type of slash-and-burn politics isn’t easy.
Barack Obama
With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.
Barack Obama
I also have the shortest commute of anybody I know. And that makes a huge difference because it means no matter how long I’m working any given day I can always go upstairs to see my wife and kids. And that’s something I probably appreciate more than anything else about being here in the White House.
Barack Obama
On every front, there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.
Barack Obama
You know, the Lincoln Bedroom, I don’t go into much, except when there are visitors. Every once in a while, I’ll sneak in, just to reread the Gettysburg Address.
Barack Obama
In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.
Barack Obama
I will say that the South Lawn is extraordinary. And we built this play set out here that Malia and Sasha used to use a lot. They’re now getting old enough where sometimes they don’t use it as much as we expect. But I’ve got nieces and nephews and kids of staff come in. And there are times when I’m working here and I’ll look out the window and suddenly somebody’s on a swing or laughing as they go down a slide, and it reminds you of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Barack Obama
Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.
Barack Obama
You know, look, our political life is like our individual lives. There are ups and downs. There are peaks and valleys.
Barack Obama
Participation in public life doesn’t mean that you all have to run for public office – though we could certainly use some fresh faces in Washington. But it does mean that you should pay attention and contribute in any way that you can. Stay informed. Write letters, or make phone calls on behalf of an issue you care about. If electoral politics isn’t your thing, continue the tradition so many of you started here at Michigan and find a way to serve your community and your country – an act that will help you stay connected to your fellow citizens and improve the lives of those around you.
Barack Obama
I make no apologies for having set high expectations for myself and for the country, because I think we can meet those expectations. Now, the one thing that I will say—which I anticipated and can be tough—is the fact that in a big, messy democracy like this, everything takes time. And we’re not a culture that’s built on patience.
Barack Obama
When we don’t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders, when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day, when we choose not to make our voices and opinions heard, that’s when democracy breaks down. That’s when power is abused. That’s when the most extreme voices in our society fill the void that we leave. That’s when powerful interests and their lobbyists are most able to buy access and influence in the corridors of power – because none of us are there to speak up and stop them.
Barack Obama
History never precisely repeats itself. But there is a pattern in American presidencies—at least modern presidencies. You come in with excitement and fanfare. The other party initially, having been beaten, says it wants to cooperate with you. You start implementing your program as you promised during the campaign. The other party pushes back very hard. It causes a lot of consternation and drama in Washington. People who are already cynical and skeptical about Washington generally look at it and say, ‘This is the same old mess as we’ve seen before.’ The president’s poll numbers drop. And you have to then sort of wrestle back the confidence of the people as the programs that you’ve put in place start bearing fruit.
Barack Obama
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.
Barack Obama
I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.
Barack Obama
These Barack Obama quotes come from a lifetime of political activism and a position of high authority. He has inspired many people, so let him inspire you.
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