Barack Obama Quotes

I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the nature of the threats around the world that we face.

These are people that don't want to protect the American people... [T]hey will do anything, spend all the time and resources they can, to avoid confronting evil.

One of the biggest mistakes that most people make is clinging to the excuse that the time isn't quite right to take action. Well, let me tell you something: In my experience, conditions are never right at the right time. The timing is always wrong. So if you're waiting for everything to be perfect before taking action, you have a foolproof excuse for never taking action.

Weakness arouses evil. The American people know this.

Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East - including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.

[John] Bolton was an advocate for regime change in Libya, so was Hillary Clinton actually. And Donald Trump said it was a mistake. I agree it was a mistake to do regime change in Libya. We became more endangered and actually worse people took over afterwards.

Donald Trump's always going to tell the American people where he stands. And, make no mistake about it. There's... there's been no change in the policy about ending illegal immigration in America.

Now terrorism is not the greatest threat facing our societies.

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.

The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it.

The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.

I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.

It is an evil time but it is a complex time because we do not have uniforms standing in front of us. Instead, we have people in disguise. It is brutal. This ISIS thing - it is something we are going to devote a lot of energy to it. I think we are going to be very successful.

'Indifference to evil is equal to evil' because it strengthens people.

We do need to confront evil in this world, but we do need to work with the other nation.

The more successful you are, the more mistakes you will make. People who don't do anything, don't make mistakes.

President Trump's made it clear that his administration is going to put the safety and security of the American people first.

I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -more evil or as evil as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War.

The lesser of two evils, or the least of the worst, is not good enough for the American people anymore.

Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.

I make my share of mistakes, but one I never make is to underestimate the power of things. People imbued from childhood with the myth of the primacy of feeling seldom like to admit they really want things as much as they might want love, but my career has convinced me that plenty of them do. And some want things a lot worse than they want love.

One of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it's healthy for our democracy.

For me, when we came out with a TV show, my HBO show, so much of the feedback was, "How do I do it?" And my response was always the same: "Just make something." Stop talking about it. You do in a way that the work takes on a life of its own. Like the "Signature" series [(2008), in which the artist trekked across the United States in the shape of his own signature] was a simple concept that became this story about the people you met along the way.

Our countries are weaker: they cannot protect us from imported goods, they can't protect us from climate change, they cannot protect us from epidemics. These things cross borders. But the kind of cooperation that would protect us from those things was completely lacking and because of this there's been a backlash. People feel vulnerable.

The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.