97 Inspirational Quotes of Barack Obama [2024]

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Updated: January 20th, 2022

Barack Hussein Obama, popularly known as Barack Obama, is an African American politician who became the 44th President of the United States of America serving during the period between 2009 to 2017. He is the first African-American man to become the President.

In 2009, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His top achievements include the passage of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”; the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six; the Iran Nuclear Deal, and the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court.

We've put together an incredible collection of Barack Obama quotes to read.

Here they are:

97 Inspirational Quotes of Barack Obama [2024]

List of Inspiring Barack Obama Quotes

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

"A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things."

"We are the change we have been waiting for."

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

"In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it."

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."

"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America."

"We don't ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours."

"Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change."

"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled."

"Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

"It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds."

"Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared."

"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig."

"While we breathe, we will hope."

"Change we need."

"The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past."

"A lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me."

"You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you."

"Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up"

"A nation that can't control its energy sources can't control its future."

"Change is never easy, but always possible."

"We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us."

"Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom."

"My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe."

"All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by."

"We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist."

"It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."

"What Washington Needs is Adult Supervision."

"There is no excuse for not trying."

"To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too."

"My little girls can break my heart. They can make me cry just looking at them eating their string beans."

"Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes...."

"You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities."

"Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness. No one deserves to be bullied."

"I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers."

"At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better"

"Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable."

"We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream"

"But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid"

"I've got daughters. Nine years old and six years old. First of all, I'm gonna teach them about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them PUNISHED with a baby."

"I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat."

"Let me tell your something. I'm from Chicago. I don't break."

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."

"This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it."

"Words do inspire."

"The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education"

"If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost."

"It [is] that courage that Africa most desperately needs."

"To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

"Make away out of no way"

"I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse."

"There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster."

"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."

"It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried."

"I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."

"The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope."

"Over the last fifteen months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been to fifty-seven states. I think, one left to go."

"We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself..."

"I'm the President, but he's The Boss."

"All the education and good intentions in the world couldn’t help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course."

"And it's safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way."

"Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing."

"What makes a man is not the ability to have a child but having the courage to raise one."

"You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want". It is your turn now to change the world. Yes we can!"

"Reading is important. If you know how to read then the whole world opens up to you"

"Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost; a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11"

"I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors."

"Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models."

"Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work."

"This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change."

"Better to be strong,' he [Lolo] said...'if you can't be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who's strong. But always better to be strong yourself"

"What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics"

"We are a people of improbable hope."

"All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American."

"When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us."

"Change won't come from the top, Change will come from mobilized grassroots."

"Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs."

"In the face of our common dangers, in this wintr of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come."

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

"Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,"

"This is the moment we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."

"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."

"We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost."

"It was like - It was like Special Olympics or something."

"Don't let your failures define you."

"But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers or moved to suburban schools - a consequence of low pay, a lack of support from the educational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation."

"It's in the misery of some unnamed slum that the next killer virus will emerge."

"So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other."

"The big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition."

"What matters is how well we have loved."

"Doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day."

"I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family."

"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point."

"In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?"

"Change has come!"

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Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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