Top 3188 Quotes & Sayings by Barack Obama - Page 49

The United States is imposing sanctions on individuals and companies working to advance Iran's ballistic missile program, and we are going to remain vigilant about it. We're not going to waver in the defense of our security or that of our allies and partners.

The two inaugurations were different. The first inauguration I was thinking to myself, "Let's make sure I don't screw this up." I think there is - people always talk about how cool I am. I don't care how cool you are.

You have people around the country who are benefitting from the steps that we've taken [with Obamacare] and as long as they continue to get helped, then at least I'll know in my own mind that the work we did here had a lasting impact.

Here`s a guy who says he`s a great businessman. But it seems like a lot of Trump's business is built around stiffing small businesses and workers out of what he owes them, work they`ve done. He thinks that`s cute or smart or funny to basically not pay somebody who`s done work for him and say go ahead and sue me because I`ve got more money than you and you can`t do anything about it.

I think [ chief organizer of the Democratic Party ] it's something that I have an interest in.

One very difficult decision was deciding to vote against the appropriations bill for the war. I had consistently said that I wanted to make sure our troops got the adequate and training in the war effort, despite the fact that I opposed the war at the point that the president decided to double down and send more troops. I had to vote against funding as a way of bringing it back to the table. That was a difficult decision for me.

Our job as Americans is to restore that basic bargain that says, if you work hard, if you're willing to meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead. You can get ahead. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter where you come from. Our middle class, when it's growing, when it's thriving, when there are ladders of opportunity for people to do a little bit better each year and then make sure that their kids are doing even better than them, that's the American dream. That's what we got to fight for. That has to be the north star that guides everything we do.

On September 11th, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

We should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected. And that's the kind of culture that I think allows all of us, then, to believe what we want. That's freedom of conscience. That's what our Constitution guarantees.

Over the past eight years, the United States has worked hard to deepen partnerships across the region and across South-east Asia in particular. We're now a part of the East Asia Summit and we have a strategic partnership with Asean. At the US-Asean Leaders Summit I hosted earlier this year in Sunnylands, California, we agreed to a set of principles that will shape the future peace and prosperity of the region, from promoting innovation and furthering economic integration to addressing transnational challenges like global health security and climate change.

My strong preference has always been to legislate when I can get legislation done.

I do think that I am generally optimistic.

I can say across Europe that many principles that have been taken for granted here around free speech, and around civil liberties and an independent judiciary, and fighting corruption, those are principles that, you know, not perfectly but generally, we have tried to apply not just in our own country but also with respect to our foreign policy.

The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil.

You haven't seen a lot of turnover in my campaign. And the culture of my campaign is one in which I think everybody feels a great sense of ownership.

My particular worries on any given day - how I'm doing in the polls or what somebody is saying about me... for good or for ill - isn't particularly relevant. What is relevant is: What am I building that lasts?

We should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected.

If you were president 50 years ago, the tragedy in Syria might not even penetrate what the American people were thinking about on a day to day basis. Today, they're seeing vivid images of a child in the aftermath of a bombing.

It still puts burden on some troops of ours who are there [in Afghanistan and Iraq] as advisors and facilitators.

No job in America should go unfilled because somebody doesn't have the right skills to get that job, nobody. So, if there's a job open, we should train those folks right away so that they can do the job.

Donald Trump will be the next president, the 45th President of the United States. And it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies. And those who didn't vote for him have to recognize that that's how democracy works. That's how this system operates.

The amount of interaction, the amount of understanding that exists in your generation among people of different races and different creeds and different colors is unprecedented. And by the way, that goes - that cuts across party lines, that cuts across partisan lines.

Your kids grow up. I think they more than anything are making me feel as if, you know, you want to squeeze everything you got every single day out of this thing. Because it passes quick.

In America, we then made a commitment, particularly after World War II with the GI Bill, to massively expand our commitment to college education, and that meant we had more engineers and we had more scientists and that meant we had better technology, which meant that we were more productive and we could succeed in the global marketplace.

Now that Iran's actions have been verified, it can begin to receive relief from certain nuclear sanctions and gain access to its own money that had been frozen.

On issues like Ukraine, on issues like Syria, we've had very significant differences [with Russia].

The United States was proud to stand with the people of Germany as this nation and this continent reunited and rebuilt and reached for a better future.

How you staff, particularly the chief of staff, the national security adviser, your White House counsel, how you set up a process in the system to surface information and generate options for a president, understanding that ultimately the president is going to be the final decision-maker. That's something that has to be attended to right away.

What I've said is we're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our nonmilitary aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

John F.Kennedy gave probably the greatest inauguration speech ever that first time, but I guarantee you when he first walked out there he was thinking, "Goodness gracious this is big and I better be up to the task."

I was always amused that people were either skeptical or surprised that I would choose a Hillary Clinton as a secretary of state. To my mind, having somebody smart, tough, capable with her own stature, who could travel around the world and command the stage, was a huge asset.

We have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith. Professed to stand up for Islam, but in fact are betraying it. Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

What I remember thinking at that point, having gone through both the ups and downs of my first four years, and seeing the sea of people was, "What a remarkable country this is and how lucky am I that we live in a place where the son of a single mom, not born into any kind of fame or fortune, in a pretty remote state somehow can end up be in a position to - to make a difference."

The dollar is the reserve currency of the world.

There are dangers that globalization increases inequality. There are dangers that because capital is mobile and workers are not, if we are not providing them sufficient protection, that they can be left behind in this process. And that's what we have to focus on.

I'm confident that America's foreign policy rebalance to the region will endure beyond my presidency because it's in the national interest of the United States.

When it comes to immigration, I think Americans expect that our immigration process is orderly and it is legal.

There are legitimate concerns and anxieties that the forces of globalisation are leaving too many people behind - and we have to take those concerns seriously and address them. But the answer isn't to turn inward and embrace protectionism. We can't just walk away from trade.

I will continue to urge creditors to take the steps needed to put Greece on a path towards a durable economic recovery because it's in all of our interests that Greece succeeds.

I have been blessed by having, and I admittedly am biased, some of the smartest, hardest-working, and good people in my administration that I think any president has ever had.

On behalf of the American people, just let me say that we are proud to count Greece as one of our closest allies and one of our greatest friends.

I am confident that Assad's days are numbered. But what we can't do is to simply suggest that, as Governor Romney at times has suggested, that giving heavy weapons, for example, to the Syrian opposition is a simple proposition that would lead us to be safer over the long term.

By 2016, the people who had looked to [Barack] Obama for change were looking somewhere else.

In America, we started the public school system very early in the century, and as a consequence we had more skilled workers than any nation on Earth, which meant that we were more productive than any nation on Earth.

Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president.

I don't want ever to be a president who is comfortable and at ease with killing people.

We have to focus on how do we ensure the economy works for everybody, and not just a few.

Our alliances and partnerships are not directed against any nation.

I think it's very important to remember that so much of the work that gets done between countries is not done at the level of presidents, but is done within various agencies, whether it's law enforcement or economic ministries. And when they establish relationships and systems of communications and shared projects and shared visions, those structures continue even after any particular president is gone. It builds trust and understanding between countries that are critically important.

In a global economy where our economies and supply chains are deeply integrated, it's not even possible.

Now, the Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilization is a great civilization. Iran has acted in ways that's not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past - none of these things have been helpful.

The most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country. But not just jobs, good paying jobs. Ones that can support a family.

I am who I am. You sort of get what you see with me.

I had said from the start that I thought Iraq was a mistake, that we should have stayed focused on Afghanistan. I think it was the right decision because the Taliban at that point had gotten a lot of momentum before I'd gotten into office, partly because we hadn't been paying attention as much as we needed to to Afghanistan.

There are always things that I think I wish I could have done better.

I'd like to think that "President Obama believed deeply in this democracy and the American people."

It is my firm belief that it will be in the interests of the United States, especially our economic interests, to pursue comprehensive immigration reform.

I thought Brittany Packnett, who was one of the Ferguson activists, really interesting, smart young lady, really impressive - you might want to talk with her. So she was one of the organizers of the Ferguson movement, ended up joining our task force. She came in here and she just knew her stuff.

I think that whenever you have got an incoming president of the other side it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality.