Obama Quotations | Page 3

I'm not saying Obama is right on everything. Of course not. He may be wrong on a number of things. But what I do know is that he behaves like a very, very sane man almost all the time.

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.

We know with certainty that the Obama administration has re-defined 'militants' to include any military-age males they kill regardless of whether they were actually doing anything wrong. We know with certainty that the U.S. Government has detained and publicly branded as 'terrorists' people they knew at the time were innocent.

I'm so proud to represent the people of South Florida. I was so honored when President Obama asked me to serve as chair of the Democratic Party. But there's one job I'm even more proud of, and that's being a mom to my three kids, Rebecca, Jake and Shelby.

Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.

The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.

Since the global economic crisis began, the change in global attitudes is clear to see - and I think it is pitiful. Barack Obama came to China and he is probably the only president of the United States never to mention the words 'human rights' in public.

I see Obama as Sisyphus in the first four years. And nobody would speak about the size of the rock, or the elevation of the hill. All you hear people talk about is what he didn't do.

The whole Obama phenomenon brings up memories from my distant past: the good-looking guy who talks real good, whose line you don't buy immediately but whose charm is so dazzling that he gradually convinces you that this time it will be different.

Republicans spend too much time on defense. We have to be on offense. We have to point out the truth. President Obama stole seven hundred million dollars from Medicare. Republicans want to preserve Medicare. Obamacare robs from Medicare.

Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well.

'Worshipping in private,' as Obama does, comes off as just another form of annoying elitism.

Under President Obama and Secretary Clinton, they're working hard to change the American dream into the European nightmare. They do celebrate more dependence on the government.

A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.

Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy.

Despite the fact that he has run the most incompetent administration in history, President Obama remains a solid bet for re-election in 2012. Obama's frontrunner status springs from two crucial facts: first, by overexposing himself in the public eye, he has made himself larger than life; second, the Republican field is pathetically weak.

Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

I am concerned if 25 percent of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I mean, it's obviously a lack of knowledge. But also, it's for the Muslims as well, you know, because a small numbers of Muslims have really painted a very negative image of Islam.

Obama not only falsely represented the Republican position - as usual - he shamelessly pretended that he was The One 'fighting so hard to cut middle-class taxes.' Baloney!

As a candidate, Obama disdained the game of politics, a self-conscious contrast to all the tireless political athletes named Clinton.

We were hoping Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America. That failed.

Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.

Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.

I believe Barack Obama has shown a deep conviction to help those most in need, even if their voices are not always the ones heard the loudest in Washington.

Having won re-election convincingly and against the economic odds, President Obama quickly made good on his promise of maintaining taxes as they are for the middle class while raising them on the wealthiest Americans.

The gap between rich and poor under President Obama is getting bigger because fewer well-paying jobs are available. Corporations are being taxed to the hilt and are loathe to add more workers. Thus, salaries fall because there are more than enough applicants to fill any job vacancy.

When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.

I applaud President Obama for launching his 'My Brother's Keeper' initiative that is aimed to empower our youth to achieve success.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

It's hardly news that the Obama administration is intensely and, in many respects, unprecedentedly hostile toward the news-gathering process.

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

Back in his Chicago Senate days, when he was seeking greater black credibility, Obama was happy enough to attend the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Trying to decipher where President Obama really stands on free trade can be like trying to trace the U.S.-Mexico border with a Google map. There are words, and there are actions - but there is mostly that long squiggly line in between.

I pay my taxes, but I've never voted and I never will vote as long as the system works the way it does. Even when Obama was running, I wanted to see a woman run! I'd rather see a woman in the White House as opposed to Obama.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

President Barack Obama would do well to take a page or two from Clinton's playbook.

The Obama administration, like those before it, promotes a disturbingly narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, misapplying the facts of old analog cases to a radically different digital world.

Electing Barack Obama president was a glorious Jackie Robinson moment for the United States of America. Obama didn't just win; he became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular-vote majority.

We know this much about how Barack Obama plans to govern: He will deploy the fattest checkbook ever at the disposal of an incoming American president.

Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low, it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.

Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of campaigning with movie stars or sailing with the Kennedys, but the real thing. The candidate himself is glamorous. Audiences project onto him the personal qualities and political positions they want in a president.

Somebody asked me, 'Why do people like vampires so much?' This was right after Obama had been elected and I said, 'Because we just spent eight years being sucked dry by one.'

Obama seems to inspire a bizarre personal loyalty among his advocates, particularly among young people who should by all rights be concerned with their fading futures and collapsing prospects.

President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election.

I am prepared to admit that when it comes to dealing with the House and Senate leaders, Obama is terrible. But he's great with the public. Which hates the House and Senate as much as he does.

Obama is the new kid with the weird name who people just sense is a little classier than his surroundings. He moved from a private school where he was class president and is now at the giant public high school with the metal detectors and the smoking lounge.

President Obama is a gifted politician. He is gifted with rhetoric virtuosity. He is gifted with the ability to lie directly to camera without blinking. And he is gifted with some of the most incompetent conservative opposition in the history of the country.

I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.

I believe the election and reelection of Obama were among the most conspicuous acts of denial in recent years. Voters just stopped paying attention. They accepted consistently bad behavior and rewarded it. Then they wonder why they get more bad behavior.

I believe Obama is a lot of fun when he's not trying to keep our economy together.

Barack Obama seems intent on enrolling more people on food stamps. Mitt Romney's focus is going to be on generating more jobs that will make food-stamps unnecessary for them.

Virtually every one of the most far-right neocon Bush officials - including Dick Cheney himself - has spent years now praising Obama for continuing their terrorism policies which Obama the Senator and Presidential Candidate once so harshly denounced.

In 2008, Barack Obama had all the wind at his back, everything going for him. He was an African-American at a time when the country was eager to do that. The Republicans had, in the view of many of us, pretty much disgraced themselves at home and abroad for eight years.

Even before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton threw their exploratory committees into the ring, every reporter seemed to be asking, 'Which candidate are Americans more ready for: a white woman or a black man?'

President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It's an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.

Obama is like the kid brother whose only standard for judging his own achievements is the records his big brother set.

After Obama became president, I realized that black people could not have put him in the White House - it had to be a collective effort of everybody in the country.

Michael Lewis, author of 'Moneyball,' got special access for a profile of Obama for 'Vanity Fair' - but Obama insisted on redlining his quotes.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are two peas in the same pod, and the American people have tasted that, and said, 'Look, that's not a good taste.'

President Obama has created the image of an America under President Bush that routinely violated international law.

When Mitt Romney talked about Putin expanding his sphere of influence, Obama mocked and said, 'The Cold War has been over 20 years, nothing to be worried about'... We keep making that mistake with Putin.

Barack Obama hopes his famous health care victory will mark him as a transformative president. History, however, may judge it to have been his missed opportunity to be one.

Obama seems like he tries to talk everyone into what he believes - and that's part of why we elected him, because he's a calm, reasonable guy - but behind that, there has to be some fight. You have to be able to take a few punches and throw a few punches.

On the Left, the best and brightest go into politics - Barack Obama is the epitome of the perfect leftist. On the Right, the best and brightest go make money. Very few conservatives want to endure all the nonsense you have to put up with to run for office.

The GOP doesn't seem particularly afraid of being perceived as blocking reform, despite efforts by the Obama White House to establish that narrative.

Obama is a guy who claims to be unaware that there was a Tea Party, a guy that's detached from the country.

President Obama will go down as having passed some of the most historic bills in the history of this country.

After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to say which element of the U.S. military had participated in the assault. Until Vice President Joe Biden decided to talk about it on national television, that is.

Mr. Obama is proud of his belief that government knows best. When he told the world that individuals were not totally responsible for their personal success, that government has a major role in it, many Americans were taken aback. But Barack Obama sincerely believes that.

You'd better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.

It was the Obama administration that cut a faux deal with the Iranians that will not disarm Iran of its nuclear capabilities, and will in fact accelerate their nuclear development.

President Obama is one of the great political knife-fighters in modern history. He is a failed president - his economy is bleak, his foreign policy bleaker, his vision for American even bleaker still. But he wins.

The violation of press freedoms has been egregious under this administration, even as the press fetes President Obama as an honest and effective commander-in-chief.

I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Obama when it comes to civil liberties, and I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Romney when it comes to dollars and cents.

While Obama might not push college education exclusively, like most Democrats he does oversell it and does shortchange the alternatives. And millions of young Americans pay the price.

Why was Barack Obama attractive to people in 2008? If you think about Barack Obama, there's all this anxiety about society, just kind of wracked by centripetal forces - the idea that the center's not holding, no one can talk to each other, the idea of a political system that's broken.

Poverty existed before January 20, 2008, OK? Before President Obama took office.

The Obama administration has been curtailing press freedom - but that hasn't ended the press' drool-cup worship for their beloved president.

The people who suffer in the Obama economy have been young people, African Americans, Hispanics, single moms.

President Obama has regularly granted special access to reporters who give him preferential coverage.

Obama is an intelligent man whose life and work experience sensitize him to class distinctions.

I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.

President Obama himself has attributed the legitimacy of the Jewish State not to its historic identity as Jewish territory, but to the Holocaust.

The Obama administration has consistently refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory, let alone as the capital of Israel.

I was like everyone else when Obama was elected - optimistic.

President Obama has his faults, but overall, I think, is a good president.

It's important for someone like me - who's known Obama for 20 years - to speak the truth. I know him to be a Christian man. I know him to be one of the greatest patriots.

It's almost as if Putin is brilliant, really - he's outfoxing Obama all the time.

Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.

I think Barack Obama is one of the most exciting politicians to come along in a long time.

Obama rammed through Obamacare legislation without a single Republican vote.

In the aftermath of President Obama's re-election, members of both the administration and the media trumpeted that Obama had received his long-sought mandate. Obamacare, Americans were told, was the law of the land. It could not be changed; it could not be stopped.

It was always foolhardy for Republicans and conservatives to stake their objections to Obamacare on the number of sign-ups; Social Security is going bankrupt despite 100% enrollment. The reality is that Obama was always destined to hit his required numbers because, after all, he has the power of government to compel action.

Al Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.

We are a resilient country. We've been through a Civil War; we've been through two World Wars. We've been through a Great Depression; we even made it through Jimmy Carter! We will make it through the Obama years!

President Obama is perhaps the most ideologically-motivated president in American history. But according to the ultimate authority, Barack Obama, he's a mere pragmatist.

Vice President Joe Biden believes that illegal immigrants are citizens. Obama believes that some Americans who join Islamist groups are citizens, while others are not. Who is an American? Whomever the executive branch deems an American. Who isn't? It depends on whether Obama ate his Wheaties or not.

Obama has placed himself in perfect political position: he spent the 2008 campaign convincing the American people that he's a racial unifier rather than a divider, without any evidence to prove it.