"The real test is not whether you..." - Quote by Barack Obama

“One of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there's Barack Obama the person and there's Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they're responding to this character that they're seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents.”

“I think we would have made a lot more mistakes and would have accomplished a lot less had we not been grounded in some basic truths.”

“Look, Americans will go for leadership that makes sense. Our job, you know, as public officials, is not to put our finger in the air. Our job is to listen, and then lead.”

“I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.”

“Success simple disciplines, practiced every day, while failure a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. Choose to succeed.”

“America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.”

“A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him.”

“Learn from the negative as well as the positive, from the failures as well as the successes.”

“The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.”