01c. 1961 ADThe study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.Barack Obama / quote ↗
02c. 1961 ADOur individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.Barack Obama / quote ↗
05c. 1961 ADWe must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.Barack Obama / quote ↗
06c. 1961 ADFor us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.Barack Obama / quote ↗
07c. 1961 ADEven 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.Barack Obama / quote ↗
08c. 1961 ADMore than anything, it is that sense - that despite great differences in wealth, we rise and fall together - that we can't afford to lose.Barack Obama / quote ↗
09c. 1961 ADthe underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us...Barack Obama / quote ↗
11c. 1961 ADAlthough the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.Barack Obama / quote ↗
12c. 1961 ADThe most important thing you need to do [in this job] is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking.Barack Obama / quote ↗
13c. 1961 ADIn reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.Barack Obama / quote ↗
14c. 1961 ADI 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.Barack Obama / quote ↗
15c. 1961 ADMy 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.Barack Obama / quote ↗
16c. 1961 ADWhen our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.Barack Obama / quote ↗
17c. 1961 ADThat is the one thing that makes me a Democrat, I suppose - this idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, should express themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; but also through our government.Barack Obama / quote ↗
18c. 1961 ADBut that’s part of what makes America wonderful, is we always had this nagging dissatisfaction that spurs us on. That’s how we ended up going west, that’s how we--“I’m tired of all these people back east; if I go west, there’s going to be my own land and I’m not going to have to put up with this nonsense, and I’m going to start my own thing, and I’ve got my homestead.” ...It is true, though, that that restlessness and that dissatisfaction which has helped us go to the moon and create the Internet and build the Transcontinental Railroad and build our land-grant colleges, that those things, born of dissatisfaction, we can very rapidly then take for granted and not tend to and not defend, and not understand how precious these things are.Barack Obama / quote ↗
19c. 1961 ADAnd that brings me to one last point. I've got a simple message for all the dedicated and patriotic federal workers who have either worked without pay, or who have been forced off the job without pay for these last few weeks. Including most of my own staff. Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters. You defend our country overseas, you deliver benefits to our troops who earned them when they come home, you guard our borders, you protect our civil rights, you help businesses grow and gain footholds in overseas markets. You protect the air we breathe, and the water our children drink, and you push the boundaries of science and space, and you guide hundreds of thousands of people each day through the glories of this country. Thank you. What you do is important, and don't let anybody else tell you different.Barack Obama / quote ↗
20c. 1961 ADDemocracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns in to universal, rather than religion-specific, values... it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.Now I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.Barack Obama / quote ↗
21c. 1961 ADI believe in (the American) people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen. I think there's evil in the world. But I think that at the end of the day, if we work hard, and if we're true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that, the world gets a little better each time. That's what this presidency is trying to be about. And I see that in the young people i work with. This is not just drama-obama. This is what I really believe.Barack Obama / quote ↗
22c. 1961 ADI've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.Barack Obama / quote ↗
23c. 1961 ADI'm an old-fashioned guy. I believe in the Enlightenment, and reason, and logic, and you know, facts.Barack Obama / quote ↗
24c. 1961 ADImplicit … in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad....A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together…Barack Obama / quote ↗
