Barack Obama, also known as Barack Hussein Obama II, served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was born on
August 4, 1961, in Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. He is also a lawyer, an American politician, and a member of the Democratic Party. Some of his accomplishments include the passage of the Affordable Care Act, stabilizing the economy with the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, authorizing the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, and legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide via the Supreme Court's support. May these famous Barack Obama quotes offer you insights that will inspire you to turn hope into action, work hard to achieve goals, and persist through setbacks.
1. “If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.” – Barack Obama
2. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
3. “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
4. “A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.” – Barack Obama
5. “We are the change we have been waiting for.” – Barack Obama
6. “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” – Barack Obama
7. “In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” – Barack Obama
8. “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America. There's the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
9. “One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.” – Barack Obama
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10. “We don't ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours.” – Barack Obama
11. “What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children—all of our children—a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.” – Barack Obama
12. “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” – Barack Obama
13. “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” – Barack Obama
14. “It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” – Barack Obama
-min.jpg "Famous quotes and sayings by Barack Obama")
15. “Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.” – Barack Obama
16. “You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.” – Barack Obama
17. “You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.” – Barack Obama
18. “Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.” – Barack Obama
19. “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.” – Barack Obama
-min.jpg "Famous quotes and sayings by Barack Obama")
20. “We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.” – Barack Obama
21. “We will outstretch the hand if you unclench yours fist.” – Barack Obama
22. “Change is never easy, but always possible.” – Barack Obama
23. “You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.” – Barack Obama
24. “Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of Hope. In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.” – Barack Obama
-min.jpg "Famous quotes and sayings by Barack Obama")
25. “There is no excuse for not trying.” – Barack Obama
26. “At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.” – Barack Obama
27. “I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.” – Barack Obama
28. “We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.” – Barack Obama
29. “Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable.” – Barack Obama
30. “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.” – Barack Obama
More Inspirational Quotes from Barack Obama
31. “We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.” – Barack Obama
32. “Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.” – Barack Obama
33. “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” – Barack Obama
34. “We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old, and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.” – Barack Obama
35. “We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.” – Barack Obama
36. “We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.” – Barack Obama
37. “If you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like or who you love.” – Barack Obama
38. “Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.” – Barack Obama
39. “We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.” – Barack Obama
40. “The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.” – Barack Obama
41. “We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer, our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation.” – Barack Obama
42. “You can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.” – Barack Obama
43. “We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.” – Barack Obama
44. “Progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always smooth path.” – Barack Obama
45. “Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.” – Barack Obama
46. “We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort.” – Barack Obama
47. “The role of citizen in a democracy does not end with your vote.” – Barack Obama
48. “My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.” – Barack Obama
49. “No matter how much you've done or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn and always more to achieve.” – Barack Obama
50. “The most important advice I give to young people is just learn how to get stuff done.” – Barack Obama
51. “I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers.” – Barack Obama
52. “I've got a pen and I've got a phone—and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” – Barack Obama
53. “In the end, this is what this election’s about—do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?” – Barack Obama
54. “Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hose on you, you can’t stop.” – Barack Obama
55. “I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody.” – Barack Obama
56. “Americans still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do.” – Barack Obama
57. “No, you can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your religious freedom. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.” – Barack Obama
58. “That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.” – Barack Obama
59. “Change doesn’t come from Washington; change comes to Washington.” – Barack Obama
60. “The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” – Barack Obama
61. “Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
62. “Those who have the privilege to serve this country have an obligation to do our job as best we can. That’s why disagreement cannot mean dysfunction… the American people’s hopes and dreams are what matters, not ours.” – Barack Obama
63. “Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies.” – Barack Obama
64. “In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power—including strong and principled diplomacy.” – Barack Obama
65. “I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America—I want to be President of the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
66. “The absence of hope can rot a society from within.” – Barack Obama
67. “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” – Barack Obama
68. “Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.” – Barack Obama
69. “America will rise again. And hope will rise again.” – Barack Obama
70. “If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists—to protect them and to promote their common welfare—all else is lost.” – Barack Obama
71. “What we need in Washington is not more political tactics—we need more good ideas.” – Barack Obama
72. “While we breathe, we will hope.” – Barack Obama
73. “I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” – Barack Obama
74. “But you don’t choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.” – Barack Obama
75. “Through every victory and every setback, I've insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.” – Barack Obama
Share these Best Barack Obama Quotes about Life with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.
2. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
3. “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
4. “A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.” – Barack Obama
5. “We are the change we have been waiting for.” – Barack Obama
6. “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” – Barack Obama
7. “In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” – Barack Obama
8. “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America. There's the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
9. “One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.” – Barack Obama
11. “What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children—all of our children—a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.” – Barack Obama
12. “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” – Barack Obama
13. “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” – Barack Obama
14. “It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” – Barack Obama
16. “You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.” – Barack Obama
17. “You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.” – Barack Obama
18. “Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.” – Barack Obama
19. “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.” – Barack Obama
21. “We will outstretch the hand if you unclench yours fist.” – Barack Obama
22. “Change is never easy, but always possible.” – Barack Obama
23. “You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.” – Barack Obama
24. “Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of Hope. In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.” – Barack Obama
26. “At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.” – Barack Obama
27. “I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.” – Barack Obama
28. “We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.” – Barack Obama
29. “Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable.” – Barack Obama
30. “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.” – Barack Obama
More Inspirational Quotes from Barack Obama
31. “We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.” – Barack Obama
32. “Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.” – Barack Obama
33. “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” – Barack Obama
34. “We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old, and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.” – Barack Obama
35. “We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.” – Barack Obama
36. “We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.” – Barack Obama
37. “If you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like or who you love.” – Barack Obama
38. “Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.” – Barack Obama
39. “We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.” – Barack Obama
40. “The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.” – Barack Obama
41. “We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer, our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation.” – Barack Obama
42. “You can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.” – Barack Obama
43. “We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.” – Barack Obama
44. “Progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always smooth path.” – Barack Obama
45. “Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.” – Barack Obama
46. “We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort.” – Barack Obama
47. “The role of citizen in a democracy does not end with your vote.” – Barack Obama
48. “My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.” – Barack Obama
49. “No matter how much you've done or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn and always more to achieve.” – Barack Obama
50. “The most important advice I give to young people is just learn how to get stuff done.” – Barack Obama
51. “I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers.” – Barack Obama
52. “I've got a pen and I've got a phone—and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” – Barack Obama
53. “In the end, this is what this election’s about—do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?” – Barack Obama
54. “Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hose on you, you can’t stop.” – Barack Obama
55. “I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody.” – Barack Obama
56. “Americans still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do.” – Barack Obama
57. “No, you can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your religious freedom. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.” – Barack Obama
58. “That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.” – Barack Obama
59. “Change doesn’t come from Washington; change comes to Washington.” – Barack Obama
60. “The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” – Barack Obama
61. “Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
62. “Those who have the privilege to serve this country have an obligation to do our job as best we can. That’s why disagreement cannot mean dysfunction… the American people’s hopes and dreams are what matters, not ours.” – Barack Obama
63. “Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies.” – Barack Obama
64. “In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power—including strong and principled diplomacy.” – Barack Obama
65. “I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America—I want to be President of the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
66. “The absence of hope can rot a society from within.” – Barack Obama
67. “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” – Barack Obama
68. “Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.” – Barack Obama
69. “America will rise again. And hope will rise again.” – Barack Obama
70. “If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists—to protect them and to promote their common welfare—all else is lost.” – Barack Obama
71. “What we need in Washington is not more political tactics—we need more good ideas.” – Barack Obama
72. “While we breathe, we will hope.” – Barack Obama
73. “I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” – Barack Obama
74. “But you don’t choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.” – Barack Obama
75. “Through every victory and every setback, I've insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.” – Barack Obama
Share these Best Barack Obama Quotes about Life with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.