Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

16 quotes

Quotes by Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"What's missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them,and drives us further apart."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"For in the end laws are just words on a page - words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"More than anything, it is that sense - that despite great differences in wealth, we rise and fall together - that we can't afford to lose."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all if they are like us, then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help we diminish ourselves."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"That is the one thing that makes me a Democrat, I suppose - this idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, should express themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; but also through our government."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been aided by a Constitution that--despite being marred by the original sin of slavery--has at its very core the ideas of equal citizenship under the laws; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to all comers, regardless of status or title or rank."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"No, what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics--the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working concensus to tackle any big problem."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

"Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes...."

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream