A Quote by Barack Obama

Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. — © Barack Obama
Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans.
I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion]. . . . We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.
Slogans rarely convince the unconvinced. However, they do rally the troops already on your side.
In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn't act tough. They didn't talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys - it makes me laugh.
Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same.
People often think that reporters write their own headlines. In fact, they almost never do. The people who do write headlines are the copy editors who are the front and last lines of quality-checking in a newspaper before it goes to print.
When we talk about good books, we often talk about good sentences, but what we rarely talk about is reader pleasure. Yet it is reader pleasure that is going to make a book break out into the kind of success that makes it into a household name.
American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.
Global security can be formed or threatened by heads of state whose wisdom, folly and obsessions shape global events. But often it is the security practitioners, those rarely in the headlines but whose craft and energy quietly break new ground, who keep us safe or put us in peril.
It's very easy to have slogans and rhetoric that people will follow, but eventually the slogans fall away.
It's very easy to have slogans and rhetoric that people will follow, but eventually the slogans fall away
One should talk tough to friends in private, but, as the first phone call with the president of the United States, you're trying to build your personal relationship. You're trying to build on the alliance and the partnerships that we have. Usually, that tough talk doesn't happen with your friends and partners. And people wonder why the tough talk by Donald Trump is happening with Mexico and happening with Germany and happening with our pals, but it's not happening with Russia.
Don't talk to me about appealing to the public. I am done with the public, for the present anyway. The public reads the headlines and that is all. The story itself is fair and shows the facts. That would be all right if the public read the facts. But it does not. It reads the headlines and listens to the demagogues and that's the stuff public opinion is made of.
The themes that the anti-globalization protesters bring to the discussion are of extraordinary importance. However, the theses that they often bring to it, sometimes in the form of slogans, are often oversimple.
When we talk about novels, we don't often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.
War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.
Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!