A Quote by Barack Obama
You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here.
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When we were working on immigration reform and there was a young Latino man, young immigration activist here who, in the Roosevelt Room, refused to shake my hand.He made a point of saying, "I can't shake your hand; you're deporting too many people." And I just said to him, "Young man, I'm glad that you feel so passionately about this issue, but you're with the president right now in the White House. You've got to think about what's going to be most effective in getting what you need, what you're trying to accomplish. Because this may not be your best strategy."
Segregation was ugly but we made something good out of something ugly. Since we were not welcome in other places run by White people, we were forced by circumstances to let our dollars circulate in our own communities. When you were young and I was young, there was a plethora of Black businesses. But when White folks said, "yes, come and spend your money with us," we ran downtown when we could only pass through downtown. Now downtown has our money.
My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.
I get a lot from all young people. I make movies for young people. If I made pictures for people my age, no one would see them. I hang with young people all the time.
I used to throw mad parties because I had all this damn money! Some of them got out of hand. People wanted to fight, steal necklaces off of people's necks. A little weird. I had to have armed security at my house. I was young, 21, 22.
I do think the public want to see politicians acting in a different way. What's brought young people into our campaign is that they were written off by political parties but they had never written off politics, and what we have is a huge number of young people, very enthusiastic and brimming with ideas. Those ideas have got to be heard.
Even very recently, the elders could say: 'You know, I have been young and you never have been old.' But today's young people can reply: 'You never have been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be.' ... the older generation will never see repeated in the lives of young people their own unprecedented experience of sequentially emerging change. This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.
A young man who came from Columbus, Ohio and made it, and who wants every other young man and young woman, black or white, to know that if I could do it, they could do it. Me and my fans grew up together, and I believe they know I'm a walking billboard and proof of that. That's what I see when I look in the mirror.
Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.
We're rewarding either the reality or the appearance of youth, which is why you have all these people in their fifties trying to act like they're seventeen. You know, it's great to be young. Be young. By all means, be young. But always remember that youth is also kinda dumb, and doesn't know a lot yet.
Hopefully, young people will see that you can be young and make the sacrifices to follow your dreams.
There are times I think of us all and I wish we were back in second grade. Not really that young. But I wish it felt like second grade. I’m not saying everyone was friends back then. But we all got along. There were groups, but they didn’t really divide. At the end of the day, your class was your class, and you felt like you were a part of it. You had your friends and you had the other kids, but you didn’t really hate anyone longer than a couple of hours. Everybody got a birthday card. In second grade, we were all in it together. Now we’re all apart.
Young people have been ill-educated, mis-educated, propagandized. I see it in everything I read written by young people. You can spot it a mile away, their ignorance. And it's coupled with they think they're the only people that know. They're arrogant. They're a little bit smarmy about what they think they know and nobody else does, which is a characteristic of young people anyway. I was that way when I was young.
The strange thing about my life is that I came to America at about the time when racial attitudes were changing. This was a big help to me. Also, the people who were most cruel to me when I first came to America were black Americans. They made absolute fun of the way I talked, the way I dressed. I couldn't dance. The people who were most kind and loving to me were white people. So what can one make of that? Perhaps it was a coincidence that all the people who found me strange were black and all the people who didn't were white.
Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.
I didn't like parties.I didn't know how to dance and people frightened me, especially people at parties. They attempted to be sexy and gay and witty and although they hoped they were good at it, they weren 't. They were bad at it. Their trying so hard only made it worse.
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