Barack Obama Quotes

I know my kids best. I know what morals and values are right for my children. I think we should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do.

People have to make their own decisions about their lives.

I'm going to make decisions that I think are best for me and my family. So, when I make these decisions, of course I'm going to ask people for advice, but at the end of the day, Brandon Jennings makes the decisions. And I feel like the decisions that I've made so far have been successful.

I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for that of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.

I'm in no position to try to tell people how to live their family life.

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

I don't want to have kids and so I am not going to have kids. People who want kids are going to have kids. I'm doing what I want to do and people who want kids are doing what they want to do. What about this scenario makes me selfish?

It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path.

Everyone has choice when to and not to raise their voices: It's you who decides.

All rational beings have an agency of their own; and according to their own choice they will be saved or damned.

I never like to tell people what they should take.

I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.

If we are not even free anymore to decide something as basic as what we wish to eat or drink, how much freedom do we really have left?

When people consent to do something, they should be able to do whatever they want.

I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism . I believe that people will decide for themselves what they want to do. The all-important thing is that they be free to make that decision and that they do not stand in the way of communities that wish to make other decisions.

We indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies, and anything from church or state that limits that is inappropriate and inconsistent with the ... society that America is supposed to be.

My whole take on libertarianism is simply that I don't know what's best for other people.

What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.

[Libertarianism] is about curbing state power to let people be and do what they want. Liberalism is about using state power to make people do and be what liberals want. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Abortion doesn't belong in the political arena. It's a private right, like many other rights concerning the family.

[People] don't like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives.

Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the people who have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way.

Government central planning means over-riding other people's plans.

One thing I've often thought is that I never want to tell anybody else what to do. It's hard enough to figure out what I want to do.

You get to decide how you're going to look and what you're going to be when you grow up and when people learned that my parents actually had an arranged marriage people thought that was the most horrific thing on earth. I mean how could anybody allow their marriage of all things to be prescribed by somebody else?