Barack Obama
Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.Collection: Home
Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them.Collection: Enemy
If we don't reform how healthcare is delivered in this country, then we are not going to be able to get a handle on that escalating healthcare costs.Collection: Country
Clem (Clementa Pinckney) understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves, in each other.Collection: Justice
Some people only speak of freedom of speech while they're out of power. Once they're in power, they're ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.Collection: Rights
Why hang out with celebrities when I can hang out with the people who made me one?Collection: People
Some people in D.C. talk about me like a dog.Collection: Dog
America is not - and never will be - at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists.Collection: War
[About his marijuana use] I did. It's not something that I'm proud of. It was a mistake as a young man, but you know? I mean not going to -- I never understood that line. The point was to inhale. That was the point.Collection: Mistake
Africa is on the move; a new Africa is emerging!Collection: Moving
Jobs was brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.Collection: Jobs
We don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all.Collection: Aviation
Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.Collection: Powerful
One of the things I think I can bring to the presidency is to make government and public service cool again.Collection: Powerful
This is our first task-caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.Collection: Jobs
Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict.Collection: Peace
We have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward.Collection: Powerful
I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak - nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.Collection: Kings
No development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground, nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work.Collection: Powerful
Tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11.Collection: Powerful
I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics. So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need.Collection: Powerful
Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom.Collection: Powerful
There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times.Collection: Powerful
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works.Collection: Government
I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are ... Not this time. Not now.Collection: Special
Hunter Pence eats pizza with a fork.Collection: Hunters
I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.Collection: Cutting
The arts are what makes life worth living. You've got food, you've got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect - make you love are communicated through the arts. They aren't extras.Collection: Art
So I'm not proposing anything radical. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton. Back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot. ... At the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses -- not when so many folks are just trying to get by.Collection: Jobs
You know, it's fashionable right now for people to be cynical. We go in cycles like this and right now a lot of people are saying, 'Oh, America is doing terribly' and 'What are we going to do?'Collection: America
We created a whole lot of millionaires to boot. Businesses did just fine. And you know there are plenty of patriotic, successful Americans all across the country -- I meet them every day -- who'd be willing to make this contribution again because they understand there is such a thing as the common good. They understand that we're in this thing together.Collection: Country
Gas tax holiday is a classic Washington gimmick.Collection: Holiday
Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.Collection: Impact
How do we in the African American community build a culture in which we are saying to our kids, "Here's what it takes to succeed. Here's the sacrifices you need to make to be able to get ahead. Here's how we support each other. Here's how we look out for each other."Collection: Kids
It is my view that if society was doing the right thing with respect to you, [and there were] programs targeted at helping people rise into the middle class and have a good income and be able to save and send their kids to school, and you've got a vigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, then I have confidence in the black community's capabilities to then move forward.Collection: Moving
Does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap [between Afro-Americans and white] would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we've had before when you talk about something like reparations.Collection: Mean
I'm not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people.Collection: Optimistic
Let's also say that the Justice Department and the courts are making sure, as I've said in a speech before, that when Jamal sends his résumé in, he's getting treated the same as when Johnny sends his résumé in.Now, are we going to have suddenly the same number of CEOs, billionaires, etc., as the white community? In 10 years? Probably not, maybe not even in 20 years. But I guarantee you that we would be thriving, we would be succeeding. We wouldn't have huge numbers of young African American men in jail.Collection: Men
We're still fighting to make sure that basic anti-discrimination laws are enforced, not just at the federal level, by the way, but throughout government and throughout the private sector? And those are fights that we can win because - and this is where I do believe America has changed - the majority, not by any means 100 percent, but the majority of Americans believe in the idea of nondiscrimination.Collection: Believe
Better may not be as good as the best, but better is surprisingly hard to obtain. And better is actually harder than worse.Collection: May
Bernie Sanders would say, "You still have millions of African Americans who aren't insured, and if we had a single-payer system, that wouldn't be the case." And that's true.Collection: African American
It is my judgment that had I spent the first two years trying to get a single-payer system, all those folks who now have health insurance that didn't have it would still be uninsured. And those are millions of people whose lives are impacted right now.Collection: Years
I get letters from [people getting insurance] right now. "You saved my child's life." "I did not have to sell my home when my wife got sick." And that is what, as a policy maker, I'm trying to achieve during the short period of time that I'm here.Collection: Children
Sometimes I wonder how much of these debates have to do with the desire, the legitimate desire, for that history to be recognized. Because there is a psychic power to the recognition that is not satisfied with a universal program, it's not satisfied by the Affordable Care Act, or an expansion of Pell grants, or an expansion of the earned-income tax credit.Collection: Psychics
My hope would be that, as we're moving through the world right now, we're able to get that psychological or emotional peace by seeing very concretely our kids doing better and being more hopeful and having greater opportunities.Collection: Moving
There is a certain percentage of the white population ... if they started having more middle-class black kids who are friends with their kids, eating Cheerios in their kitchen, their attitudes start changing.Collection: Attitude
I don't want to exaggerate; having as many African American men as we've had in the criminal-justice system, and the amount of time it takes for the damage done by that to wash through our society and our communities, the disadvantages born out of kids being undiagnosed with mental-health problems early, or not getting the kind of exposure to reading and math when they're 4 or 5 or 6 years old, that carries a cost.Collection: Reading
You don't take it personally. You understand that if people are angry that somehow the government is failing, then they are going to look to the guy who represents government.Collection: Government
There have been times where, let's say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the [George W.] Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness.Collection: Military