In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.
Hope - Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology
Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God's will-they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.
On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.
From Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope:" "I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex - nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount."
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
we are the ones we have been waiting for
Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes.
I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.
In many ways [those middle-aged black ladies] my touchstone, because they are what I meant when I talked about the audacity of hope.
To reinvent your own country you need a great audacity of hope.
Barack Obama said yesterday that the economy was 'going to get worse before it gets better.' See, that's when you know the campaign is really over. Remember before the election? 'The audacity of hope!' 'Yes, we can!' 'A change we can believe in!' Now it's, 'We're all screwed.'
or simply:
