Barack Obama Quotes

… there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk.

Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them.

The alternative position to whether torture is acceptable - that's not an alternative position, that's barbarism. The question here is not whether torture is acceptable or whether it works. It should be simply seen as a war crime. There's no other position on torture.

An order to fire on people that do not fire on you is a completely illegal order.

Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything.

'24' glamorizes torture. I don't think there's any other way of putting it.

We turned our Hotchkiss on the prisoners and made and end to them.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.

Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us - every single one of us - knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.

A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.

If we condone torture, we yield the moral high ground to our enemies and encourage anyone who hates us to stoop to using that subhuman level against us. We reap whatever we sow.

I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.

I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

The world is restructuring, and all of the enemies that used to exist are kind of gone, so now they are looking out for new enemies.

Genocide is not a legitimate option. It's not ok to decide that an entire population has no right to live in the world. No matter whether these relationships are very proximate or very distant, there is no entitlement to expunge a population or to demean its basic humanity.

The torture and other sadistic abuses of prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come. Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.

The most racist, nastiest act by America, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I'm glad I'm not a scientist because I'd feel so guilty now.

I favor an aggressive expansion of America's intelligence capabilities domestically and around the world.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings.

America's view of apartheid is simple and straightforward: We believe it is wrong. We condemn it. And we are united in hoping for the day when apartheid will be no more.

Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.

I go to social media, check out my granddaughter's new boyfriend, but the Department of Homeland Security can't figure out they need to be tracking they jihadi web sites?

All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.

We can grow economically and restore America's leadership in the world, so that everybody has a chance to rise up.