Barack Obama Quotes

In difficult times, it's important to speak up. We cannot change the past, but we can impact the future.

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

Being an activist is about getting things done. It's not about standing around shaking your fist in anger.

You never, ever give up the chance to change things, ever, no matter how hard it is. If you're elected, and have got the opportunity to make a difference, you take it.

You can't just sit around and make protest albums all your life; eventually it comes to the point where you have to do something.

Back in those days we thought we could change the world.

The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.'

I don't know if you can change things, but it's a drop in the ocean.

All I can do is to try and make the future better.

On one hand, I am very pessimistic, but on the other hand, if I didn't believe that speaking up would do something, I wouldn't have spoken.

Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Hope doesn't mean anything. ... Action's the only thing that counts.

In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.

We live in a world where action is what counts.

To be a member of the Labor Party is to be an optimist - optimistic about the future of Australia, optimistic about the ability of government to make a difference.

You can't be a change-maker by reading a book.

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.

But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.

You realize you can't change the world but it shouldn't stop you from trying.

If we give up on politics, we're done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I am telling you that I am very grateful and am so proud of you for being a symbolic generation that is calling for change to the better, that is dreaming for a better future, and is making the future.

Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.