Barack Obama Quotes

The problems of the country look very different from the Oval Office than they do from the campaign trail.

I think every administration has a settling-in process. And there's always an adjustment between what you can say during a campaign and what you find are the possibilities and the imperatives when you win the election and you enter the Oval Office.

I think when you're running for president, especially someone that's never held elected office, there's one set of things that you may view the world through - a lens that you may view the world through. Then, you get elected and you get good people. And those good people bring you the facts. And they bring you, "Here's what's going on. Here are our options. Here's what happens if you do this. Here's what happens when you do that." And that reality begins to assert itself. And you have to react to that. You're now the president. You're no longer a candidate.

I think the President himself is a remarkably intelligent, decent, ethical man. I think he did very well, but I think the job builds up over expectations which all candidates contribute to including this President that simply cannot be fulfilled.

All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency.

Obviously in a campaign, people say lots of things that they find, when they get in the office, life's a little different.

Donald Trump did not appear by magic.

Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid, and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work-you said you're going to reach out to these people-how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Donald Trump must be taken seriously. He is fulfilling his dangerous campaign promises.

I don't sense an [Barack] Obama party. I think politics is transactional for him.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. ...You can't 'stay the course' because you don't have a course.

I think that Donald Trump successfully mobilized a big chunk of America to vote for him and he's going to win. He has won. He's going to be the next president and regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up and those - those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick because reality has a way of asserting itself.

There's just something about this job as president every president faces, you know, that you think one thing going in and then the pressures of the job or the realities of the world, you know, are different than you thought.

I know when my father [Donald Trump] puts his mind to something he's going to do a phenomenal job with it. He's a great businessman. He has an incredible track record. And I know he understands what this country needs and what it wants.

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often.

Who could have predicted this, that the presidency is kind of a hard job? Nobody knew that. I also like the fact that Trump is a detail-oriented person. I find his interviews amazing. He's actually kind of remarkably candid.

I sometimes call Donald Trump the placebo president. He will talk a big game, but for domestic policy I think change remarkably little.

President-elect [Donald] Trump has said thousands of times, I will build a wall. He didn't just say he'll build a wall. I'll build a great wall and it will be a beautiful wall, and I'll make the Mexicans pay for it.

Reality is always kinder than your thinking.

We like to say we're in the promise keeping business. And literally from the first day of this administration we've been working to put into effect the policies that the president campaigned on, and that we really do believe will strengthen America at home and abroad.

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

No, it's not fair, but what makes Earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You'll find out for yourself soon enough. It won't help the situation for you to get all upset.

The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world.

Donald Trump hasn't been specific, but if you go back over some of the campaign rhetoric, well, obviously, there's the bully pulpit, just publicly shaming out-sourcing companies. And that again is not new to Trump. If you remember, back in 2004, John Kerry was making noises about Benedict Arnold CEOs in a similar context. So, that's got a long and gloried tradition.