Quotes about Progress

Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

The road we have taken to this point has not been easy. But then again the road to change never is.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.

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.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or time. We are the ones we've been waiting for change we seek.

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...

Justifying the past mattered less than planning what to do next.

Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

History travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways.

Despite all that, they'd given me a chance. Through the noise and chatter of the political circus, they'd heard my call for something different. Even if I hadn't always been at my best, they'd divined what was best in me: the voice insisting that for all our differences, we remained bound as one people, and that, together, men and women of goodwill could find a way to a better future.

And although it was hard to match his excitement over washers and dryers, the results really were pretty amazing: By the time I left office, those new appliance standards were on track to remove another 210 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere annually.