Barack Obama Quotes

“I'm not just a candidate, I'm the President”

“What is certainly true is that the American people, just like the German people, just like the British and people around the world, are seeing extraordinarily rapid change. The world is shrinking, the economies have become much more integrated and demographics are shifting.”

“Every country has violent, hateful, or mentally unstable people. What's different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns.”

“Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new.”

“One of the gratifying things, I think, about the end of my presidency even though admittedly my successor ran against a lot of what we stood for, is when you look at the individual issues and the progress that we've made on a lot of those issues, we got the support of a pretty decent majority.”

“We are not entitled to success we have to earn it”

“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.”

“I don't think we should ever accept the idea that someone can come along and take away our safety and our freedom.”

“We don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all.”

“You might slow down a little bit, you might not jump as high as you used to, but I know what I'm doing and I'm fearless.”

“Young people: I understand this is important to you, but as you be thinking about climate change, the economy and jobs, war and peace, maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana.”

“The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11 ... The program does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans. Rather, it consolidates these records into a database that the government can query if it has a specific lead - phone records that the companies already retain for business purposes.”

“In America, we're getting too comfortable with our ability to take kinetic strikes around the world without having enough process to avoid consistently the kinds of civilian casualties that can end up actually hurting us in the war against radicalization.”

“And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”

“Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.”

“We do not benefit from a relationship with China or any other country in which we put our values and our ideals aside.”

“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”

“We believe that big nations should not bully smaller nations, and that the sovereignty of nations must be respected. And we have long urged that disputes be resolved peacefully, including through mechanisms like international arbitration.”

“If you only think about yourself - how much money can I make, what can I buy, how nice is my house, what kind of fancy car do I have? - over the long term, I think, you get bored. I think your life becomes diminished. The way to live a full life is to think: What can I do for others?”

“One thing you learn in this job [being US President] is that even if something's not your fault, you're still responsible. And that's how it should be.”

“The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.”

“The path of America's development is never a straight line. Sometimes we move in ways that are forwards; sometime that seem back.”

“A free market was never meant to be a free licence to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.”

“I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.”

“I'm named Barack Hussein Obama. I'm African-­American.”