Citati Baracka Obame

U duhu pobede na još jednim američkim izborima koje je (iz ovih ili onih razloga) pratio čitav svet, slede neki od najupečatljivijih citata ponovnog američkog predsednika, Baracka Obame.

– It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

– We are the ones we have been waiting for.

– You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.

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

– You can’t let your failures define you — you have to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next time.

– The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it’s educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they’re going to fall behind.

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

– I will never forget that the only reason I’m standing here today is because somebody, somewhere stood up for me when it was risky. Stood up when it was hard. Stood up when it wasn’t popular. And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world.

– I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

– 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.

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

– We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.

– In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it is a pre-requisite.

– We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained.

– If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.

– I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.