Barack Obama
We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a clean energy age. We need diplomats and businessmen and women, and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy. In other words, we need you.Collection: Zero
Yes, this is hard. But there should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate. We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it. We will do our part, and we will help developing nations do theirs. But we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation - developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass.Collection: Responsibility
Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for 'That One.' And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president.Collection: Running
If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans to master the tools and technology that will change the way we do just about everything.Collection: Cutting
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before.Collection: Oil
In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.Collection: Simple
Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.Collection: Moving
Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.Collection: Powerful
When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances for waiting and for patience is over. Too many lives have been lost, too many billions of dollars have been spent for us to trust the president on another tired and failed policy that's opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.Collection: Country
Our enemies are fully aware that they can use oil as a weapon against America. And if we don't take this threat as seriously as the bombs they build or the guns they buy, we will be fighting the War on Terror with one hand tied behind our back.Collection: War
I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.Collection: Thinking
Their [the evangelicals'] success also points to a hunger for the product they are selling, a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause... They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them.Collection: Issues
The war does not end when you come home. It lives on in memories of your fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who gave their lives. It endures in the wound that is slow to heal, the disability that isn't going away, the dream that wakes you at night, or the stiffening in your spine when a car backfires down the street.Collection: Dream
Do something, Congress. Do anything.Collection: Congress
I don't want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be President of the United States of America.Collection: Blue
This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.Collection: Religious
I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can't just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.Collection: Opportunity
Let's remember that our leadership is defined not just by our defense against threats, but by the enormous opportunities to do good and promote understanding around the globe to forge greater cooperation, to expand new markets, to free people from fear and want. And no one is better positioned to take advantage of those opportunities than America.Collection: Opportunity
With the magnitude of the challenges we face right now, what we need in Washington are not more political tactics, we need more good ideas. We don't need more point scoring, we need more problem solving.Collection: Ideas
America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.Collection: Struggle
There's something about the American spirit - inherent in the American spirit -- we don't hang on to the past. We always move forward.... We are going to leave something better for our children - not just here in the United States, but all around the world.Collection: Children
People are whupped. I'm whupped. My wife is whupped. Unless it's your job to be curious, who really has the time to sit and ask questions and explore issues?Collection: Jobs
The truth is, some of these comments, when you actually ask 'well, this is based on what? This notion that Obama's a socialist, for example?' Nobody can really give you a good answer.Collection: Giving
It was young people who stubbornly insisted on justice, stubbornly refused to accept the world as it is that transformed not just the country but transformed the world.Collection: Country
No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla's captivity and death, ISIL is a hateful and abhorrent terrorist group whose actions stand in stark contrast to the spirit of people like Kayla.Collection: Long
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known - this bond is unbreakable.Collection: Strong
Good afternoon, everybody-ugh, Jesus, gimme a sec.Collection: Jesus
My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.Collection: Powerful
I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.Collection: Powerful
We can get this done! Take a vote, and send me that bill.Collection: Done
I'll turn the page on a growing empire of classified information. We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources and methods to hide the truth.Collection: Pages
So just to be clear, I'm not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 percent.Collection: Rate
That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.Collection: Teaching
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.Collection: Greatness
Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren.Collection: Determination
[A]lthough the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.Collection: Self
We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.Collection: Fighting
Libraries have a special role to play in our knowledge economy. Your institutions have been and should be a place where parents and children come to read together and learn together. We should take our kids there more.Collection: Children
Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history ..... Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earthCollection: Witty
What you saw was the people of New York having a debate, talking through these issues. It was contentious. It was emotional. But ultimately, they made a decision to recognize civil marriage. And I think that's exactly how things should work.Collection: New York
I think that we've had an economy that's been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one.Collection: Thinking
Even while we may at times disagree, as friends sometimes will, the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable and the commitment of the United States to the security of Israel is ironclad.Collection: Commitment
ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.Collection: Simple
Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity...[For] we are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.Collection: Children
My presidency is not over. I've got another five years coming up.Collection: Years
Iraq will require US occupation of undetermined length.Collection: Iraq
Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.Collection: Thinking
Each side has legitimate aspirations - and that's part of what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in the other's shoes; each side can see the world through the other's eyes. That's what we should be encouraging. That's what we should be promoting.Collection: Eye
Ten thousand people died, an entire town destroyed.Collection: People