Quotes from Barack Obama

Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

Chicago, a town that's accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment.

For most of the twentieth century, for most Americans, the what and why of our national defense seemed pretty straightforward. We lived with the possibility of being attacked by another great power, or being drawn into a conflict between great powers, or having America's vital interests—as defined by the wise men in Washington—threatened by some foreign actor. After

Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.

We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer - our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation.

I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount.

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.

The only reason I send a single young man or woman in uniform anywhere in the world is because I think it's necessary to keep us safe.

This dual sense of individual advancement and collective decline that I thought accounted for some of the most troubling attitudes I heard in some conversations.

Still, there was no getting around the fact that many of the people most culpable for the nation's economic woes remained fabulously wealthy and had avoided prosecution mainly because the laws as written deemed epic recklessness and dishonesty in the boardroom or on the trading floor less blameworthy than the actions of a teenage shoplifter.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder — but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer — but we travel it together. We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes...

Michelle was someone who started from the heart and not the head, from experience rather than abstractions.