Lenny Kravitz Quotes

I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

The first black president will be a politician who is black.

Obama is the first African-American president, and for some people, that means a great deal, and for some people, it means very little.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Because of where I come from, I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.

I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

We do have a black president, and that means a lot. People ask, 'What has he done?' What he's done is change the color up, which you see on the screen. When the head of the free world is black, there's got to be some sort of spin-off from it.

I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president.

My grandmother probably never thought she would see a day where, you know, a young black woman would be seen as a leader, which is incredible.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals.

I couldn't go to school with whites. Now there are schools that educate everyone.

Barack Obama's official nomination as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer was a very poignant moment for millions of Americans. As the first non-white major party nominee, Obama is carrying a big load on his shoulders. He's holding the hopes and dreams of a lot of folks who thought the presidency was only reserved for white men.

Let me tell you the truth: I'm 45 years old. I never thought that I would live to see a black president.

My Uncle, of course, would have been pleased to see someone with brown skin holding the office of president.

The day will come - and it is not far off - when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

The very fact that Barack Obama - an African-American - was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph.

I would say the country is a different country. It is a better country. The signs I saw when I was growing up are gone and they will not return. In many ways the walls of segregation have been torn down.

There is nothing radical about Obama except the fact of who he is.

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.

When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.

I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there - all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

The small moments I've had to talk with President Obama, I've told him, 'I get it.' His presidency was in some ways almost overshadowed by the fact that he was the first black president.