Top 500 Barack Obama Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela. These countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.”

— Barack Obama

302. “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

— Barack Obama

303. “The War on Drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.”

— Barack Obama

304. “Good afternoon, everybody-ugh, Jesus, gimme a sec.”

— Barack Obama

305. “The pain I felt was my father’s pain.”

— Barack Obama

306. “Peace is not just the absence of war. True peace depends upon creating the opportunity that makes life worth living. And to do that, we must confront the common enemies of human beings: nuclear weapons and poverty; ignorance and disease.”

— Barack Obama

307. “I am a strong believer in the free market. I am a strong believer in capitalism. But, I am also a strong believer that there are certain common goods – our air, our water, making sure that people are safe – that require to have some regulation.”

— Barack Obama

308. “Sometimes slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

— Barack Obama

309. “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.”

— Barack Obama

310. “I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”

— Barack Obama

311. “In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.”

— Barack Obama

312. “I mean, if you think about – if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

— Barack Obama

313. “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

— Barack Obama

314. “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.”

— Barack Obama

315. “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian – for me – for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

— Barack Obama

316. “Our resources may be finite, but our will is infinite, and I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.”

— Barack Obama

317. “I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels.”

— Barack Obama

318. “What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children – all of our children – a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

— Barack Obama

319. “Foreign Assistance is not an end in itself. The purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it is no longer needed.”

— Barack Obama

320. “Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.”

— Barack Obama

321. “For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”

— Barack Obama

322. “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.”

— Barack Obama

323. “The world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found.”

— Barack Obama

324. “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.”

— Barack Obama

325. “Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what’s in it for you create a ripple effect. Ones that lift up families and communities, that spread opportunity.”

— Barack Obama

326. “I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and – and rational argument.”

— Barack Obama

327. “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

— Barack Obama

328. “His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.”

— Barack Obama

329. “I just miss – I miss being anonymous.”

— Barack Obama

330. “When people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country, people will work hard, and the entire economy will grow – everyone will benefit and more resources will be available for all, not just select groups.”

— Barack Obama

331. “When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free.”

— Barack Obama

332. “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”

— Barack Obama

333. “If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.”

— Barack Obama

334. “The soldier ’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.”

— Barack Obama

335. “Let us join together across denominations, religions and cultures to make a habit of empathy and reach out to those most in need. To share the blessings we enjoy and to advance the cause of peace in all corners of our world.”

— Barack Obama

336. “The single biggest threat that we face is a nuclear weapon or some weapon of mass destruction. What that means is that we have to be extraordinarily aggressive and vigilant in controlling nuclear proliferation.”

— Barack Obama

337. “America will rise again. And hope will rise again.”

— Barack Obama

338. “Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.”

— Barack Obama

339. “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”

— Barack Obama

340. “I am very proud of the fact I do not cheat when I’m playing golf.”

— Barack Obama

341. “I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law.”

— Barack Obama

342. “We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.”

— Barack Obama

343. “I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I am not a perfect man.”

— Barack Obama

344. “There are few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love. Well, love and a birth certificate.”

— Barack Obama

345. “If we are truly created equal then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

— Barack Obama

346. “I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven’t been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife I didn’t put up for that stuff just to come in second.”

— Barack Obama

347. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”

— Barack Obama

348. “I believe there are too many children who need loving parents to deny one group of people adoption rights. A child will benefit from a healthy, loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.”

— Barack Obama

349. “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works.”

— Barack Obama

350. “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known – this bond is unbreakable.”

— Barack Obama