Barack Obama

I don’t want my generals or my defense secretary or my national-security team to ever feel deploying weapons to kill people as routine or abstract, even if the targets are bad people.

Barack Obama

I don’t worry about the survival of the novel. We’re a storytelling species.

Barack Obama

I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.

Barack Obama

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Barack Obama

I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a working class community. There were no miracles in my life, there’s nothing miraculous about how I grew up, and I want people to know when they look at me, to be clear that they see what an investment in public education can look like.

Barack Obama

I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.

Barack Obama

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

Barack Obama

I have the authority to address the threat from Isil, but I believe we are strongest as a nation when the president and Congress work together. So I welcome congressional support for this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.

Barack Obama

I just miss – I miss being anonymous.

Barack Obama

I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by. Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that.

Barack Obama