Quote collection
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"To me the question right now is: How do I close that first three-quarters of the achievement gap, education gap, wealth gap? What gives me the best chance to do that? And I'm pretty darn sure that if America is a just society and treating people well right now, irrespective of past wrongs, that I'm going to close a big chunk of that gap. I've seen it."
"Better may not be as good as the best, but better is surprisingly hard to obtain. And better is actually harder than worse."
"We buy our own toilet paper even here in the White House."
"So many of my staff is young enough that they're going to do amazing things. And I'm going to be helping them try to do them."
"I do think that saving the economy was a pretty big deal. We did a lot of stuff early that ended up having an impact. I believe that the work we've done in moving our energy future in a cleaner direction is going to stick even if some of the individual steps that we took are reversed by future administrations. I think that it's embedded itself in the economy."
"The one thing I've said to [Donald Trump] directly, and I would advise my Republican friends in Congress and supporters around the country, is just make sure that, as we go forward certain norms, certain institutional traditions don't get eroded, because there's a reason they're in place."
"First of all, I think everybody has to acknowledge don't underestimate the guy [Donald Trump], because he's going to be 45th president of the United States."
"In the first two years, when I had a strong majority in the House and the Senate, we were as productive as any administration has been since the '60s. I mean, we got a lot done."
"We were very effective, and I was very effective, in shaping public opinion around my campaigns. But there were big stretches, while governing, where even though we were doing the right thing, we weren't able to mobilize public opinion firmly enough behind us to weaken the resolve of the Republicans to stop opposing us or to cooperate with us. And there were times during my presidency where I lost the PR battle."
"I think we want to see new voices and new ideas emerge - that's part of the reason why term limits are a really useful thing."
"I don't have to negotiate an arms agreement with Great Britain or with France."
"There's a whole generation coming up behind us that was engaged, inspired, worked for change during the course of my presidency, saw what was possible."
"If we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then we better think about how to make sure that our political process, our political dialogue is stronger than it's been."
"If Mr. [Donald] Trump is up 10 or 15 points on Election Day and ends up losing, then, you know, maybe he can raise some questions. That doesn't seem to be the case at that moment."
"This comes from a group of people who`ve been wrong about every foreign policy issue over the last two decades. They supported Hillary Clinton`s war in Libya. They supported President [Barack] Obama`s bombing of Assad."
"We [USA] don't have diplomatic leverage to eliminate every vestige of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran. What we do have the leverage to do is to make sure that they don't have a weapon."
"The alternative, no limits on Iran's nuclear program, no inspections, an Iran that's closer to a nuclear weapon, the risk of regional nuclear arms race, and the greater risk of war - all that would endanger our [American] security."
"Do I wish that things were more orderly in Washington and rational and people listened to the best arguments and compromised and operated in a more thoughtful and organized fashion? Absolutely. But when you look at history that's been the exception rather than the norm."
"I have fought against spending. I have fought against special interests. I have fought for reform."
"I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to as well. But what I don't wanna do is get bottled up in a lot of ideology and is this conservative or liberal. My interest is finding something that works."