"We know what happens when Europeans start dividing themselves up and emphasizing their differences and seeing a competition between various countries in a zero sum way."
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Quote collection
Barack Obama quotes (page 113 of 157)
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"Congress is hard to deal with, dealing with, you know, multiple parliaments and commissions and unions and this and that and the other, that's very complicated."
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"I think the American people recognize is after a decade of war it's time to do some nation building here at home. And what we can now do is free up some resources, to, for example, put Americans back to work, especially our veterans, rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our schools, making sure that, you know, our veterans are getting the care that they need when it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, making sure that the certifications that they need for good jobs of the future are in place."
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"There are people in Iran who have the same aspirations as people all around the world for a better life."
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"I think that America has to stand with democracy."
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"I've said consistently that I always reserve the right, in conjunction with a broader international effort, to prevent genocide or any wholesale slaughter than might happen inside of Iraq or anyplace else."
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"We are engaging in the diplomatic efforts that are required within Iraq among the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurd, among friends, like Egypt, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but also enemies like Iran and Syria. They have to have buy-in into that process."
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"If we have a phased redeployment where we're as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, then there's not reason why we shouldn't be able to prevent the wholesale slaughter I think some people have suggested might occur."
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"Any discuss about taxes ends up being, are you raising them or lowering them, as the opposed to the question I ask - are we raising them for high income individuals that can afford it, and lowering them for lower income people who really need help. Those old categories don't work, and they're preventing us from solving them problems."
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"We are going to trace more effectively, how these guns are ending up on the streets, to unscrupulous gun dealers, who often times are selling to straw purchasers. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill."
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"I want to deal with the homeless situation here in Washington, D.C. I think it is a travesty that we've got men - and increasingly women - families, across the street and the in shadow of this great capital, that shows a lack of concern, not just for the capital, but for American, when we are allowing something like that to happen."
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"Those are the ladies sitting in church. And in the same way that they might feel a joy and release on Sunday, they are still going to work on Monday. And that's who I was listening to during this process. And if at the end of my presidency they feel like I did a pretty good job, then I'll feel pretty good."
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"I can say with confidence that I never bought into the hype, and I made sure that the people around me didn't buy into the hype, and I did not surround myself with people who fed me the hype. And I'm glad of that as well."
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"I said to one young activist who herself was the daughter of an undocumented worker, and so could speak from a very personal and legitimate perspective - I remember saying to her: I agree with you, from a moral perspective, that a child from Honduras is worth the same as my daughter. God is not a respecter of boundaries; he's not saying that American kids deserve a better life than Honduran kids. But I'm the president of the United States, and the nation-state by definition means that boundaries mean something and borders mean something."
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"Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I've had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let's say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back?"
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"When you take on the position of president, you are committing yourself to, first and foremost, protecting the American people. You are accepting an institutional role that requires you to make hard decisions and hard choices, and as a consequence you have to take your moral sense and not put it aside."
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"You wouldn't know that if you talked to Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International or some of the international activist organizations. Certainly you wouldn't know that if you were talking to some of the writers who criticize our drone policy. But I've actually told my staff it's probably good that they stay critical of this policy, even though I think right now we're doing the best that we can in a dangerous world with terrorists who would gladly blow up a school bus full of American kids if they could."
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"It wasn't until about a year, year and a half in where I began to realize that the Pentagon and our national-security apparatus and the CIA were all getting too comfortable with the technology as a tool to fight terrorism, and not being mindful enough about how that technology is being used and the dangers of a form of warfare that is so detached from what is actually happening on the ground. And so we initiated this big process to try to get it in a box."
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"That sort of lack of awareness on the part of an activist about the constraints of our political system and the constraints on this office, I think, sometimes would leave me to mutter under my breath. Very rarely did I lose it publicly. Yeah, usually I'd just smile."
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"The problem was, and we saw some of this in the immigration-reform issues as well, was they hadn't done sufficient homework to know that I didn't have all the capacity they thought I did in order to just execute this through the stroke of a pen."
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