Barack Obama
Immigration keeps this country young, it keeps it dynamic, we have entrepreneurs and strivers who come here and are willing to take risks, and that's part of the reason why America historically has been successful.Collection: Country
Immigration is part of the reason why our economy is stronger and better positioned than most of our other competitors, is because we've got a younger population that's more dynamic when it comes to trade.Collection: Stronger
Donald Trump is somebody who I think likes to mix it up and to have a vigorous debate.Collection: Thinking
I don't think Donald Trump is ideological.Collection: Thinking
People who have health insurance are benefiting in all sorts of ways that they may not be aware of, everything from no longer having lifetime limits on the claims that they can make to seniors getting prescription drug discounts under Medicare to free mammograms.Collection: Senior
[People] are looking for some means of control and what that means is is that the politics in all of our countries is gonna require us to manage technology and global integration and all these demographic shifts in a way that makes people feel more control, that gives them more confidence in their future.Collection: Country
I think that our politics everywhere are gonna be going through this bumpy phase. But as long as we stay true to our Democratic principles, as long as elections have integrity, as long as we respect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, as long as there are checks and balances in our governments so that the people have the ability to not just make judgments about how well government is serving them but also change governments if they're not serving them well, then I have confidence that over the long term, progress will continue.Collection: Integrity
[Donald Trump] ran an extraordinarily unconventional campaign and it resulted in the biggest political upset in perhaps modern political history. American history.Collection: Political
Elections matter and voting counts.Collection: Voting
Some of Donald Trump's gifts that obviously allowed him to execute one of the biggest political upsets in history, those are ones that hopefully he will put to good use on behalf of all the American people.Collection: People
The American people recognize that their careers or their kids' careers are going to have to be more dynamic. That they might not be working at a single plant for 30 years. That they might have to change careers. They might have to get more education. They might have to retool or retrain. And I think the American people are game for that.Collection: Kids
Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.Collection: Powerful
I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader's ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow.Collection: Country
I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now.Collection: Thinking
Imagine if you had genuine, high-quality early-childhood education for every child, and suddenly every black child in America - but also every poor white child or Latino [child], but just stick with every black child in America - is getting a really good education. And they're graduating from high school at the same rates that whites are, and they are going to college at the same rates that whites are, and they are able to afford college at the same rates because the government has universal programs. So now they're all graduating.Collection: Children
[The Americans] believe in the idea that Jamal and Johnny should be treated equally.Collection: Believe
[The Americans] believe in the idea that a child shouldn't be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth.Collection: Children
Now, in practice, in daily social interactions, etc., there may be all kinds of biases and prejudices that are unspoken, that people aren't aware of, that affect who's hired, and who gets loans, and how kids are treated in school. But it's a powerful thing if you have on your side an idea that the overwhelming majority of people believe in because that's how you can build a consensus that's lasting.Collection: Powerful
As opposed to getting into arguments about, well, these folks have been treated fairly so now we're going to be doing things that, very easily in the minds of a lot Americans feel like, "Now I'm being treated unfairly."Collection: Mind
If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President [Pervez] Musharraf will not act, we will.Collection: President
[White House] feels even more like home now because you have all these memories that were formed watching your kids grow up.Collection: Growing Up
I, more than anything, obviously the presidency is the people, and it's been interesting the emotions in the last few months. What you realize is that you may never have the team that is together in the same way, under the same pressures, and the attachments that you make to folks from your chief of staff down to.Collection: Team
We had a farewell dinner for some of my senior staff, and generally everybody likes to talk about how cool I was.Collection: Senior
[The White House staff] start bringing in their kids, who you think should be babies and now are in second grade or something, and you've watched them grow up. So I think what ends up happening is you end up maintaining those networks and those contacts, but the concentrated interactions and experience that you have here, I don't think, I don't expect you can duplicate anyplace else.Collection: Baby
If we're not vigilant foreign countries can have an impact on the political debate in the United States in ways that might not have been true 10, 20, 30 years ago in - in part because of the way news is transmitted and in part because so many people are skeptical of mainstream news organizations that - everything's true and everything's false.Collection: Country
In that kind of environment, where there's so much skepticism about information that's coming in, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time thinking about how do we protect our democratic process.Collection: Thinking
I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.Collection: Country
The conversations have been cordial. [Donald Trump] has been open to suggestions, and the main thing that I've tried to transmit is that there's a different between governing and campaigning, so that what he has to appreciate is as soon as you walk into this office after you've been sworn in, you're now in charge of the largest organization on Earth.Collection: Organization
You can't manage [country] the way you would manage a family business.Collection: Country
I've enjoyed the conversations that we've had. [Donald Trump] is somebody who I think is not lacking in confidence.Collection: Thinking
Listening to evangelicals bridges major political fault line.Collection: Bridges
Filibuster has long tradition, but used to harm civil rights.Collection: Rights
Healthcare system is broken without lifetime employment.Collection: Broken
The market alone can't solve our health-care woes.Collection: Care
Americans should tremble before suggesting that any fellow citizen lacks patriotism.Collection: Citizens
We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States. If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what's going to happen when they see a documentary they don't like or news reports they don't like."Collection: United States
Al Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America, who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam, and so we have to go after them.Collection: America
That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.Collection: America
That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door.Collection: Dream
You know, in college, I smoked a little pot, did a little blow.Collection: Blow
We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil. We only have 2 percent of the reserves.Collection: Oil
My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.Collection: Believe
And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth.Collection: Jobs
The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me, and a matter of bewilderment for my wife.Collection: Wife
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help... Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business - you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.Collection: Successful
The one thing I've said to [Donald Trump] directly, and I would advise my Republican friends in Congress and supporters around the country, is just make sure that, as we go forward certain norms, certain institutional traditions don't get eroded, because there's a reason they're in place.Collection: Country
I don't regret at all saying that if I saw Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his people that that would change my assessments in terms of what we were or were not willing to do in Syria.Collection: Regret
If 90 percent or 95 percent of those - chemical stockpiles [in Syria] were eliminated, that's a lot of chemical weapons that are not right now in the hands of ISIL or Nusra or, for that matter, the regime.Collection: Hands
If you're saying that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu got fired up, he's been fired up repeatedly during the course of my presidency, around the Iran deal and around our consistent objection to settlements.Collection: Iran