Barack Obama Quotes

Our society has lost its taste for complexity and nuance…. We want simple answers …. We have almost disabled our politicians from speaking.

Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated.

Some things I think are very conservative, or very liberal. I think when someone falls into one category for everything, I'm very suspicious. It doesn't make sense to me that you'd have the same solution to every issue.

I listen to my political rivals sometimes with fear and trembling, sometimes with awe, sometimes with near panic, but always with a curiosity of nuances, curiosity for the language, curiosity for the story behind the 'impossible' position.

Simple black-and-white thinking or action is always going to be problematic.

It is boring to have all the answers. Only political people have answers.

What I really don't like is oversimplification.

I love hard political debate and I love beating somebody on a political point but what I'm more frustrated by is the politics where you play the man not the politics.

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

To be a fashion critic is easy because you just say, 'I love it, I hate it,' but life is more than love and hate.

We're going to hear a lot of spirited discussion about the President's plan in the next few days and weeks and that's fine as long as everyone comes ready to talk and not just snipe, complain and argue.

I don't agree with everything that any of our political leaders say or believe - that's going to happen sometimes.

Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.'

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

I'm not a politician because I'm an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.

I'm not 100 percent anybody's ideological prism.

Accusations fit on a bumper sticker. The truth is longer.

There is never just one way in politics.

… steer clear of bogus simplicity

If hyperbolic political speech were outlawed, there’d be silence in America.

I think there are some liberals who are extremely biased about Fox News and wish to shun it or wish to criticize any liberal who appears on Fox News. That, to me, is not a particularly liberal attitude.

You know, 'Professor Obama' has been a label applied to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. He's a very smart guy. But I think he'd be, you know, better served not to spend so much time trying to impress us with his particular position on an issue and understand that there are things upon which we simply have a disagreement.

I would rather sit down with a Hollywood liberal any day than simply surround myself with fellow conservatives.

The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own.