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I've Been Talking About Things Like Reversing The Rise Of Inequality And Strengthening Social Mobility,since Before It Was Cool.
-Barack Obama
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I've Been Talking About

Barack Obama
...
I've Been Talking About Things Like Reversing The Rise Of Inequality And Strengthening Social Mobility,since Before It Was Cool.

Understanding the Quote: "i've been talking about things like reversing the rise of inequality and..."

This quote by Barack Obama reflects deeply on the theme of talking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Talking, Mobility, Social, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Barack Obama interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Barack Obama

Barack Obama is celebrated for insightful thoughts on talking and mobility. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Talking
Mobility
Social
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I Have To Say That My Kids, Like Every Child In America, Is Completely Absorbed With Harry Potter. And So, I Have Gotten Sucked Into It, Too; I Can't Wait For The Next One To Come Out. I Am Trying To Figure Out What Happens With Harry And Voldemort. So We Have Been Reading That.
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I Have Never Had To Travel More Than Thirty Seconds From Home To Office, And It's Because Of That That I've Been Able To Maintain, Really A Family Life That Has Nurtured And Sustained Me During This Time [of Presidency].
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What Is A Danger Is That We Stay Stuck In A New Normal Where Unemployment Rates Stay High, People Who Have Jobs See Their Incomes Go Up, Businesses Make Big Profits. But They're Learned To Do More With Less, And So They Don't Hire.
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The Friendship That We Established Early On In Our Marriage ... That Carries You Through Tough Times. That And A Good Sense Of Humor.
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We Are Not At War Against Islam.
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While I Understand The Passions And The Anger That Arise Over The Death Of Michael Brown, Giving Into That Anger By Looting Or Carrying Guns, And Even Attacking The Police Only Serves To Raise Tensions And Stir Chaos.
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But At The End Of The Day, The Circumstances Of Your Life What You Look Like, Where You Come From, How Much Money You Have, What You've Got Going On At Home That's No Excuse ... Where You Are Right Now Doesn't Have To Determine Where You'll End Up. No One's Written Your Destiny For You. Here In America, You Write Your Own Destiny. You Make Your Own Future.
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It Is My View That If Society Was Doing The Right Thing With Respect To You, [and There Were] Programs Targeted At Helping People Rise Into The Middle Class And Have A Good Income And Be Able To Save And Send Their Kids To School, And You've Got A Vigorous Enforcement Of Anti-discrimination Laws, Then I Have Confidence In The Black Community's Capabilities To Then Move Forward.
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Rights
Issues
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Cities
Mind Blowing
Secret
Buy Health Insurance, Or Go To Jail.
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We Have To Make Sure America Writes The Rules Of The Global Economy, And We Should Do It Today While Our Economy Is In The Position Of Global Strength, Because If We Don't Write The Rules For Trade Around The World, Guess What: China Will.
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All Of Us - We Should Do Everything We Can To Make Sure This Country Lives Up To Our Children's Expectations.
Country
Children
Powerful
Progress In The Most Impoverished Parts Of Our World Enriches Us All.
Our World
Progress
World
What We Have Done, I Think, Is Build A Model From A Lot Of Hard Lessons In Afghanistan And Iraq But In Other Places Around The World, Where We Are Working With Them In An Advisory Capacity.
Thinking
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Done
I Think We All Know That World Owes An Enormous Debt To Greece And The Greek People.
Thinking
People
Greek
In Sectors Like Energy, I Haven't Been Arguing For More Spending Per Se; I've Been Arguing That It Doesn't Make Sense For Us To Spend $4 Billion Subsidizing An Oil Industry That's Mature And Very Profitable. We Should Be Using That Money To Finance Clean Energy Of The Future.
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Politics
Energy
The Greatest Danger Of All Is To Allow New Walls To Divide Us From One Another
Inspiring
Wall
Danger
Yes, We Can. Yes, We Can Change. Yes, We Can.
Yes We Can
When We Think Of The Major Threats To Our National Security, The First To Come To Mind Are Nuclear Proliferation, Rogue States And Global Terrorism. But Another Kind Of Threat Lurks Beyond Our Shores, One From Nature, Not Humans - An Avian Flu Pandemic.
Thinking
Mind
Pandemics
I Promised To Bring Change To Washington. The Underlying Reason For The Economic Mess We're In Has Been Building For Years. It's A Fundamental Imbalance In Which The Top 1 Percent Now Gets Almost A Quarter Of All National Income. We Haven't Seen Income And Wealth This Concentrated Since The Late Nineteen Twenties, And We All Know What Happened Then - The Great Depression. We'll Never Really Get Out Of The Gravitational Pull Of The Great Recession Until We Fix This Basic Problem.
Great Depression
Problem
Wealth
We Don't Have This Huge Footprint, We Are Less Likely To Be Targeted As, You Know, Occupiers [in Afghanistan And Iraq].
Iraq
Footprint
Afghanistan
America Is An Unlikely Place - A Country Built On Defiance Of The Odds; On A Belief In The Impossible. And I Remind You Of This Because As You Set Out To Live Your Own Stories Of Success And Achievement, It's Now Your Turn To Help Keep It This Way.
Inspiring
Country
Odds
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Country
People
In That Kind Of Environment, Where There's So Much Skepticism About Information That's Coming In, We're Gonna Have To Spend A Lot More Time Thinking About How Do We Protect Our Democratic Process.
Thinking
Information
Kind
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Children
People
Age
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Clever
Powerful
Talking
I Am Living Testimony To The Moral Force Of Non-violence. I Know There's Nothing Weak - Nothing Passive - Nothing Naïve - In The Creed And Lives Of Gandhi And King.
Kings
Powerful
Violence
The Emotions Between The Races Could Never Be Pure; Even Love Was Tarnished By The Desire To Find In The Other Some Element That Was Missing In Ourselves. Whether We Sought Out Our Demons Or Salvation, The Other Race Would Always Remain Just That: Menacing, Alien, And Apart.
Reflection
Race
Missing
Despite All The Noise And Hullabaloo - Military Cooperation, Intelligence Cooperation, All Of That Has Continued. We Have Defended Them Consistently In Every Imaginable Way. But I Also Believe That Both For Our National Interests And Israel's National Interests That Allowing An Ongoing Conflict Between Israelis And Palestinians That Could Get Worse And Worse Over Time Is A Problem. And That Settlements Contribute.
Military
Believe
Israel
If You Think You Got A Better Idea In Terms Of How To Approach This That's Not Gonna Result In More Pollution, And More Asthma, And More Illness Then Put Your Ideas Out There. But Don't Just Oppose Things Because, "this Was Obama's Agenda."
Thinking
Ideas
Agendas
You Might Be Locked In A World Not Of Your Own Making, Her Eyes Said, But You Still Have A Claim On How It Is Shaped. You Still Have Responsibilities.
Eye
Responsibility
World
If We're Going To Prevent Large Parts Of This Earth From Becoming Not Only Inhospitable But Uninhabitable In Our Lifetimes, We're Going To Have To Keep Some Fossil Fuels In The Ground Rather Than Burn Them And Release More Dangerous Pollution Into The Sky.
Sky
Fuel
Earth
We're Going To Have To Invest In The American People Again, In Tax Cuts For The Middle Class, In Health Care For All Americans, And College For Every Young Person Who Wants To Go. In Businesses That Can Create The New Energy Economy Of The Future. In Policies That Will Lift Wages And Will Grow Our Middle Class. These Are The Policies I Have Fought For My Entire Career.
Cutting
College
Class
I'm A Warrior For The Middle Class.
Warrior
Class
Middle
The Authorization I Propose Would Provide The Flexibility To Conduct Ground Combat Operations In Other More Limited Circumstances, Such As Rescue Operations Involving U.s. Or Coalition Personnel Or The Use Of Special Operations Forces To Take Military Action Against Isil Leadership, It Would Also Authorize The Use Of U.s. Forces In Situations Where Ground Combat Operations Are Not Expected Or Intended, Such As Intelligence Collection And Sharing, Missions To Enable Kinetic Strikes Or The Provision Of Operational Planning And Other Forms Of Advice And Assistance To Partner Forces.
Leadership
Military
Advice
Jobs Was Brave Enough To Think Differently, Bold Enough To Believe He Could Change The World, And Talented Enough To Do It.
Jobs
Believe
Thinking
How Donald Trump Reaches Out To Groups That May Not Have Supported Him, How He Signals His Interest In Their Issues Or Concerns, I Think Those Are The Kinds Of Things That Can Set A Tone That Will Help Move Things Forward Once He Has Actually Taken Office.
Moving
Taken
Thinking
What Is True, And I Think That We Can't Deny It, Is That Some Of The Same Concerns About Globalization, About Technology, Rapid Social Change That Were Reflected In Brexit, That's Been Reflected In Some Of The Debates In Germany And France And Other Places, That Those Exist In The United States As Well. My View Is That Over The Long Term, Over The Next 10, 15, 20 Years, If We Are Able To Address The Legitimate Economic Concerns Of Those Who Feel Left Behind By Globalization, Then Many Of These Tensions Will Be Reduced. And We Will See A World That Is Less Divided.
Technology
Thinking
Views
Chancellor [angela] Merkel Is Perhaps The Only Leader Left Among Our Closest Allies That Was There When I Arrived. So In Some Ways We Are Now The Veterans Of Many Challenges Over The Last Eight Years.
Eight
Years
Leader
We Can't Afford More Top-down Economics. What We Need Are Policies That Will Grow And Strengthen The Middle Class.
Top Down
Class
Needs
I Thought I Could Start Over, You See. But Now I Know You Can Never Start Over. Not Really. You Think You Have Control, But You Are Like A Fly In Somebody Else's Web. Sometimes I Think That's Why I Like Accounting. All Day, You Are Only Dealing With Numbers. You Add Them, Multiply Them, And If You Are Careful, You Will Always Have A Solution. There's A Sequence There. An Order. With Numbers, You Can Have Control.
Thinking
Order
Numbers
Some People Only Speak Of Freedom Of Speech While They're Out Of Power. Once They're In Power, They're Ruthless In Suppressing The Rights Of Others.
Rights
People
Freedom Of Speech
In The Eyes Of God, A Child On The Other Side Of The Border Is No Less Worthy Of Love And Compassion Than My Own Child. We - We Can't Distinguish Between Them In Terms Of Their Worth And Their Inherent Dignity And That They're Deserving Of Shelter And Love And Education And Opportunity. We Can't Isolate Ourselves. We Can't Hide Behind A Wall.
Children
Wall
Eye
The Muslim Call To Prayer Is One Of The Prettiest Sounds On Earth At Sunset.
Prayer
Sunset
Sound
I Will Set Big Goals For This Country As President - Some So Large That The Technology To Reach Them Does Not Yet Exist.""i Will Recruit New Teachers And Make New Investments In Rural Schools, We'll Connect All Of America To 21st Century Technology And Telecommunications.
Country
Teacher
School
We Cannot Allow Internet Service Providers To Restrict The Best Access Or To Pick Winners And Losers In The Online Marketplace For Services And Ideas.
Ideas
Loser
Winner
Under My Plan Of A Cap-and-trade System, Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket.
Electricity
Caps
Rate
If You Have Health Insurance, Then You Don't Have To Do Anything. If You've Got Health Insurance Through Your Employer, You Can Keep Your Health Insurance, Keep Your Choice Of Doctor, Keep Your Plan.
Doctors
Choices
Employers
It Will Take Time To Eradicate A Cancer Like Isil. And Any Time We Take Military Action, There Are Risks Involved - Especially To The Servicemen And Women Who Carry Out These Missions. But I Want The American People To Understand How This Effort Will Be Different From The Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan. It Will Not Involve American Combat Troops Fighting On Foreign Soil.
Cancer
Military
War
You Bomb Isil. You're Not Trying To Bomb Innocent People. And That Requires Intelligence And Confidence In Our Military To Be Able To Develop The Kinds Of Targets That We Need. We're Already Doing Special Forces, Who Are Going To Help Us Gather That Intelligence And Help Advise And Assist And Train Local Forces So That They Can Go After Isil In Areas Like Raqqah And Mosul.
Military
People
Special
There Is No Military Solution To The War In Iraq. Our Troops Can Help Suppress The Violence, But They Cannot Solve Its Root Causes. And All The Troops In The World Won't Be Able To Force Shia, Sunni, And Kurd To Sit Down At A Table, Resolve Their Differences, And Forge A Lasting Peace. In Fact, Adding More Troops Will Only Push This Political Settlement Further And Further Into The Future, As It Tells The Iraqis That No Matter How Much Of A Mess They Make, The American Military Will Always Be There To Clean It Up.
Military
War
Roots
A Budget Is More Than Just A Series Of Numbers On A Page; It Is An Embodiment Of Our Values.
Numbers
Embodiment
Pages
This Self-reflection, This Willingness To Examine Ourselves, To Make Corrections, To Do Better, That's Part Of What Makes Us Americans. It's Part Of What Sets Us Apart From Other Nations, The United States Is The Most Professional, Most Capable, Most Cutting-edge Intelligence Community In The World.
Cutting
Reflection
Self
Ramadan Is A Celebration Of A Faith Known For Great Diversity And Racial Equality.
Muslim Faith
Diversity
Mind Blowing
Politics In This Country [usa] Is Always Tough. It's Always Contentious, Because This Is A Big Country And A Diverse Country, And People Have Strong Points Of View, And We've Got A Great Diversity Of Interests.
Country
Strong
Views
And I Do Not Want, And I Will Not Accept, A Deal In Which I Am Asked To Do Nothing, In Fact, I'm Able To Keep Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars In Additional Income That I Don't Need, While A Parent Out There Who Is Struggling To Figure Out How To Send Their Kid To College Suddenly Finds That They've Got A Couple Thousand Dollars Less In Grants Or Student Loans.
Couple
Struggle
Kids
The Greatest Threat To U.s. And Global Security Is No Longer A Nuclear Exchange Between Nations, But Nuclear Terrorism By Violent Extremists And Nuclear Proliferation To An Increasing Number Of States.
Nuclear Terrorism
Numbers
Nuclear Proliferation
Us Intelligence Agencies Will Only Use Such Data To Meet Specific Security Requirements: Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterproliferation, Cybersecurity, Force Protection For Our Troops And Allies, And Combating Transnational Crime, Including Sanctions Evasion.
Agency
Nsa
Data
We Buy Our Own Toilet Paper Even Here In The White House.
White
House
Paper
We're All In This Together. That's How We Campaigned, And That's Who We Are. This Happened Because Of You. Thank You.
Together
Who We Are
Election
Whenever I Look At The History Of Presidents I Deeply Admire - The One Thing That I'm Always Struck By Is Persistence. It's A Quality That's Underrated. Being Able To Plough Through, Being Able To Stay Buoyant In The Face Of Challenges.
Persistence
Challenges
President
One Of The Great Things About The United States Is That When It Comes To World Affairs, The President Obviously Is The Leader Of The Executive Branch, The Commander-in-chief, The Spokesperson For The Nation, But The Influence And The Work That We Have Is The Result Not Just Of The President, It Is The Result Of Countless Interactions And Arrangements And Relationships Between Our Military And Other Militaries, And Our Diplomats And Other Diplomats, The Intelligence Officers And Development Workers.
Military
Leader
President
We've Been Able To Organize The International Community Around It In Ways That Aren't Going To Go Back.
Community
Able
Way
Nothing In Life That’s Worth Anything Is Easy.
Easy
If There's A Senior Citizen In Downstate Illinois That's Struggling To Pay For Their Medicine And Having To Chose Between Medicine And The Rent, That Makes My Life Poorer Even If It's Not My Grandparent.
Senior
Struggle
Illinois
I Miss Saturday Morning, Rolling Out Of Bed, Not Shaving, Getting Into My Car With My Girls, Driving To The Supermarket, Squeezing The Fruit, Getting My Car Washed, Taking Walks.
Girl
Morning
Car
And Terrorists Who Seek To Harm Our Citizens Will Feel The Long Arm Of American Justice.
Long
Justice
Arms
I Think We Did A Really Good Job In Saving This Economy And Putting Us Back On The Track Of Growth.
Jobs
Thinking
Track
After All, There Were Thousands Of So-called Campus Radicals, Most Of Them White And Tenured And Happily Tolerated. No, It Remained Necessary To Prove Which Side You Were On, To Show Your Loyalty To The Black Masses, To Strike Out And Name Names.
Loyalty
Leather Jackets
Names
Military Surge In Afghanistan To Eliminate The Taliban.
Military
Afghanistan
Taliban
We Have To Think About Affirmative Action And Craft It In Such A Way Where Some Of Our Children, Who Are Advantaged, Aren't Getting More Favorable Treatment Than A Poor White Kid Who Struggled More.
Children
Kids
Thinking
More Broadly, Prime Minister Lee [hsien Loong] And I Will Work To Advance The Us-singapore Partnership Across The Board. We're Committed To Sustaining The Dynamism Of Our Economies With The Trans-pacific Partnership - The Highest-standard Trade Agreement Ever - Which Will Support Trade And Innovation In Both Our Countries.
Country
Agreement
Support
No Country Should Deny People Their Rights Because Of Who They Love, Which Is Why We Must Stand Up For The Rights Of Gays And Lesbians Everywhere.
Country
Gay
Rights
As A Product Of History And Faith, Jewish Americans Have Helped To Open Our Eyes To Injustice, To People In Need, And To The Simple Idea That We Ought To Recognize Ourselves In The Struggle Of Our Fellow Men And Women.
Struggle
Eye
Simple
If It's On Facebook, It All Looks The Same.
Looks
Ifs
So Americans Understand The Costs Of War. Yet As A Country, We Will Never Tolerate Our Security Being Threatened, Nor Stand Idly By When Our People Have Been Killed. We Will Be Relentless In Defense Of Our Citizens And Our Friends And Allies. We Will Be True To The Values That Make Us Who We Are.
Country
War
Patriotic
We Can't Have Special Interests Sitting Shotgun. We Gotta Have Middle Class Families Up In Front. We Don't Mind The Republicans Joining Us. They Can Come For The Ride, But They Gotta Sit In Back.
Class
Mind
Special
... I Just Want To Remind The Owners And The Players: You Guys Make Money Because You Have A Whole Bunch Of Fans Out There Who Are Working Really Hard. They Buy Tickets. They're Watching On Tv. Ya'll Should Be Able To Figure This Out. Get This Done.
Inspirational
Motivational
Hockey
So We Have A Choice To Make. We Can Once Again Let Washington's Bad Habits Stand In The Way Of Progress. Or We Can Pull Together And Say That In America, Our Destiny Isn't Written For Us But By Us. We Can Place Good Ideas Ahead Of Old Ideological Battles, And A Sense Of Purpose Above The Same Narrow Partisanship. We Can Act Boldly To Turn Crisis Into Opportunity And, Together, Write The Next Great Chapter In Our History And Meet The Test Of Our Time.
Writing
Destiny
Opportunity
Cathleen Falsani: What Is Sin? Barack Obama: Being Out Of Alignment With My Values.
Islam
Sin
Christianity
None Of This Is Fair To You. And Should It Continue, It Will Make It More Difficult To Keep Attracting The Kind Of Driven, Patriotic, Idealist Americans To Public Service That Our Citizens Deserved And That Our System Of Self-government Demands.
Patriotic
Government
Self
We Invest In Early Childhood Education. We Invest Additional Job Training Dollars. We Make Sure That We've Got A Strong Research And Development Strategy So That We Continue To Innovate. Rebuilding Our Infrastructure, Which We Know Will Attract Businesses.
Strong
Jobs
Research And Development
I Think My Most Important Advice Is To Understand What Are The Foundations Of A Healthy Democracy And How We Have To Engage In Citizenship Continuously, Not Just When Something Upsets Us; Not Just When There's An Election Or When An Issue Pops Up For A Few Weeks. It's Hard Work.
Hard Work
Thinking
Issues
We Know Hackers Steal People's Identities And Infiltrate Private E-mails. We Know Foreign Countries And Companies Swipe Our Corporate Secrets.
Country
Secret
Identity
I've Been Very Good For Gun Manufacturers.
Gun
Very Good
I Will Continue To Believe That Israel's Security Is Paramount.
Believe
Israel
Paramount
On September 11th, 2001, In Our Time Of Grief, The American People Came Together. We Offered Our Neighbors A Hand And We Offered The Wounded Our Blood. We Reaffirmed Our Ties To Each Other And Our Love Of Community And Country. On That Day, No Matter Where We Came From, What God We Prayed To, Or What Race Or Ethnicity We Were, We Were United As One American Family.
Country
Grief
Hands
This Is Not Class Warfare. It’s Math.
Math
Class
Warfare
Weapons That Were Designed For Soldiers In War Theaters Don’t Belong On Our Streets.
War
Soldier
Weapons
I Want Every Young Man Who Sees Me To Know That I'm Not That Different From Them. I Wasn't Born Into Wealth. I Wasn't Born Into Fame. I Made A Lot Of Mistakes - But I Kept At It.
Mistake
Men
Different
America Remains The One Indispensable Nation. And The World Needs A Strong America.
Strong
America
Needs
The Answers To Our Problems Don't Lie Beyond Our Reach. They Exist In Our Laboratories And Universities; In Our Fields And Our Factories; In The Imaginations Of Our Entrepreneurs And The Pride Of The Hardest-working People On Earth. Those Qualities That Have Made America The Greatest Force Of Progress And Prosperity In Human History We Still Possess In Ample Measure.
Lying
Pride
America
That Is Another Theme In The Book [dreams From My Father]. How Do We Exercise More Empathy In Our Public Discourse? How Do We Get The Black To See Through The Eyes Of The White? Or The Citizen To See Through The Eyes Of The Immigrant? Or The Straight To See Through The Eyes Of The Gay? That Has Always Been A Struggle In Our Politics.
Dream
Father
Book
I Don't Think That Any Economist Disputes That We're In The Worst Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression. The Good News Is That We're Getting A Consensus Around What Needs To Be Done.
Money
Thinking
Needs
We Do Not Benefit From A Relationship With China Or Any Other Country In Which We Put Our Values And Our Ideals Aside.
Country
Memorable
Benefits
We've Endured Too Many Tragedies. And Each Time I Learn The News I React Not As A President, But As Anybody Else Would - As A Parent.
Parent
Tragedy
President
If We Want To Really Reduce Foreign Influence On Our Elections, Then We Better Think About How To Make Sure That Our Political Process, Our Political Dialogue Is Stronger Than It's Been.
Thinking
Political
Stronger
Moammar Gadhafi Had More American Blood On His Hands Than Any Individual Other Than Osama Bin Laden.
Blood
Hands
Osama Bin Laden
We've Got To Change Our Regulatory System.
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