Barack Obama Quotes

Throughout our history each and every generation has expanded upon the freedoms won by their parents and grandparents. Each and every generation has removed some of the barriers to full participation in the American dream. And the next great barrier standing before our generation is the prohibition on marriage for same-sex couples

It won't take 40 years for opposition to same-sex marriage to dissipate.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

Sooner or later they are going to live in a New York City where gay marriage is not only legal, but it's common and they don't even notice.

I don't think that the country is ever ready to have the conversation about race.

The diversity industry needs friction to survive, so it perpetually reworks the definition of racism.

I've got two young sons who, when I ask them and their friends how they feel about gay marriage, kinda give me one of those looks like, 'Gosh, Mom, why are you even asking that question?'

Isn't that sort of what happened with gay marriage? Right before gay marriage was legalized, everybody was just losing their minds and, like, the worst possible things were happening, and it was just all like it couldn't get any worse, and then it suddenly got a lot better.

I believe that all men and women are created equal, but it took our country until 1920 to acknowledge this for women. And then it took until 1964, the year before I was born, to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And same-sex marriage became the law of the land in 2015.

I think everyone should be happy. I think a fool is going to go against same sex marriage at this point. Look how long it took him [Obama] to say he was for same sex marriages. You understand? I'm up for it. If everyone else is for it, then hey, to each his own. I don't have personal feelings towards it because I'm not involved in that lifestyle. I want people to be happy. It makes for everything to be better

The argument about marriage equality will one day seem as arcane and shocking to us as the fact that Rosa Parks had to get up and go to the back of the bus.

C'mon everybody, yeah, this is your life I'm talking about a revolution we gotta organize We don't need no segregation, we don't need no race New age revelation, I think we got a case. I'm OK as long as u are here with me Sexuality is all we ever need.

I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.

I just don't feel that we've traveled very far in the realm of social equality. There just seems to be a little bit of unrest. And sometimes I think that happens when you really feel like something's about to change. Right before the moment of lift off, sometimes things feel a little bit unhinged, and that's what it feels like to me right now, both as a woman and just as a human on the planet as an American woman in America. I feel like we're on the precipice of change. I feel a little nervous.

To me, same-sex marriage is like the new normal. I don't give a sh*t. If two gay people want to get married it doesn't bother me. If two people say they love each other and they want to be together, they should be together. Don't you think?

To show you, just to illustrate the inroads the homosexual marriage crowd has made, it is now common to hear on television and in the midst of debate the concept of "opposite-sex marriage."

One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

For me, diversity whether you think of it as race or gender, it's not a trend, it's a human movement, it's a human feeling, it's a human desire.

Those social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.

Now, I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we're not where we need to be. And all of us have more work to do.

Same-sex marriage is so ingrained in the culture now that when you're talking about regular, good old-fashioned marriage, you have to say "opposite-sex marriage" to let people know what you're talking about. Just describing, just talking about "marriage" doesn't let anybody know what you mean anymore. You have to specify opposite-sex marriage.

[Speaking about same-sex marriage] It's about familiarity, and I think the only reason they're uncomfortable with the notion of same-sex marriages is because they haven't come into contact with gay and lesbian couples enough to understand that it's about love - and that it is a civil right.

I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.

I think that as our country becomes more tolerant as a whole of certain things, hopefully becomes more tolerant, there's a way that certain kinds of bullying will be passe and unacceptable.

I don't think my films are going to get rid of racism or prejudice. I think the best thing my films can do is provoke discussion.