A Quote by Barack Obama

There have been times where, let's say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the [George W.] Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness.
President Obama says he wants to put an end to the policy, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' Yeah, in the military. This is not to be confused with George Bush's policy, 'Don't Know, Don't Care.' That's a whole different deal.
You can never ask God to tell you what the end is. You can ask, "Is this a good thing to do?" But not, "How is this going to turn out?" That answer you will never get.
We were not given any statistics as to how many records were pressed on the blue label. I used to ask Bob Shad how we were going to get paid from record sales and what I got for an answer was not to worry about the business end of the deal.
I'm not going to tell you I know George W. Bush intimately. I'm not going to tell you we're best friends. I'll tell you I met him on a number of occasions. You know what? George W. Bush is a very nice guy. Very funny guy. His wife is a very nice woman; I thought she was a great first lady. George [W.] Bush was the worst president in the history of the United States of America... The issue is not Bernie Sanders. The issue is the Koch brothers. The issue is who owns America.
I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end.
Do not ask the stones or the trees how to live, they can not tell you ; they do not have tongues; do not ask the wise man how to live for, if he knows , he will know he cannot tell you; if you would learn how to live , do not ask the question; its answer is not in the question but in the answer, which is not in words; do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so.
If you ask me what am I, I might say 'I am a Californian,' and if George Bush were here, he would say 'I am a Texan.'
Some might think that George W. Bush had his shortcomings, but let me tell you something - history's going to be kind to George W. Bush.
From almost the first day they got into office, they (President Bush and Vice President Cheney) were trying to figure out how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I'm not a psychiatrist - I don't know all of the reasons behind their concern, some might say their obsession.
When George W. Bush decided to save the American position in Iraq by going against the advice of all of his wise men, of Jim Baker and the whole Iraq Study Group, and 90% of his administration, that was George W. Bush's decision. So we have to bear in mind that this isn't an administration we're electing. It's a person that we are electing.
I would say that by being irresponsibly disorganized, by saying yes to everything and then seeing how it all works out, that I end up in some place closer to where I had imagined I would be, before I started to study philosophy, than I would ever be had I followed through in any sort of responsible way, and become the professor of philosophy that I shudder to think I might potentially have become.
Only when you have got a clear statement of what you want to achieve, do you ask yourself how you are going to achieve it. In the military we are taught never to go for a single answer, no matter how obvious that might be.
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, 'I want to be famous.' You ask them, 'For what reason?' and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong - in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.
When [George W.] Bush was elected, I think they thought I would have some sort of special "in" with that administration, to provide some sort of inside poop. Which is not something I'd be interested in doing, and anyway, I didn't. I actually knew more people in his dad's administration. So it was obviously winding down at Rolling Stone, and they were having financial troubles, too. They weren't getting the advertising, and the issues were getting thin. They fired Bob Love, who'd been my editor there for a long time.
I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!