Barack Obama Quotes About Past
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Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008...That’s why, over the past six years, we’ve done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it.
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America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.
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Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.
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We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a clean energy age. We need diplomats and businessmen and women, and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy. In other words, we need you.
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Over the past eight years, the United States has worked hard to deepen partnerships across the region and across South-east Asia in particular. We're now a part of the East Asia Summit and we have a strategic partnership with Asean. At the US-Asean Leaders Summit I hosted earlier this year in Sunnylands, California, we agreed to a set of principles that will shape the future peace and prosperity of the region, from promoting innovation and furthering economic integration to addressing transnational challenges like global health security and climate change.
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It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.
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My top priority in any trade negotiation is expanding opportunity for hardworking Americans. It's no secret that past trade deals haven't always lived up to their promise, and that's why I will only sign my name to an agreement that helps ordinary Americans get ahead, the bill put forward today would help us write those rules in a way that avoids the mistakes from our past, seizes opportunities for our future and stays true to our values.
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I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now.
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It continues to be my strong belief that the way we are going to make sure that everybody feels a part of this global economy is not by shutting ourselves off from each other, even if we could, but rather by working together more effectively than we have in the past.
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Does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap [between Afro-Americans and white] would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we've had before when you talk about something like reparations.
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During the course of my presidency crime has been the lowest it's been probably since the '60s. Butyou wouldn't know it if you were watching TV or looking at the internet, and you certainly wouldn't know it, listening to this past [Donald Trump's] campaign.
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I can document this past week [of presidency] we've put out memos from every agency showing what did we do. Try to be as honest as possible. There's a little hype involved obviously. It's spin because it's our agencies. We feel some pride about it. But tried to be self-critical as well.
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In the course of a healthy debate, we prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter - then we're going to keep talking past each other, and we'll make common ground and compromise impossible.
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We also recommit to supporting tribal self-determination, security, and prosperity for all Native Americans. While we cannot erase the scourges or broken promises of our past, we will move ahead together in writing a new, brighter chapter in our joint history.
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Now, the Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilization is a great civilization. Iran has acted in ways that's not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past - none of these things have been helpful.
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To me the question right now is: How do I close that first three-quarters of the achievement gap, education gap, wealth gap? What gives me the best chance to do that? And I'm pretty darn sure that if America is a just society and treating people well right now, irrespective of past wrongs, that I'm going to close a big chunk of that gap. I've seen it.
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I want my children - I want Malia and Sasha - to understand that they've got responsibilities beyond just what they themselves have done. That they have a responsibility to the larger community and the larger nation, that they should be sensitive to and extra thoughtful about the plight of people who have been oppressed in the past, are oppressed currently.
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The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.
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Obviously, we've all had disagreements and differences in the past. I suspect we'll have them again in the future. But last night as Americans learned that the United States had carried out an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. I think we experienced the same sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. We were reminded again that there is a pride in what this nation stands for. And what we can achieve that runs far deeper than party, far deeper than politics.
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The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
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America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page of the policies of the past.
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Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
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In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.
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There's something about the American spirit - inherent in the American spirit -- we don't hang on to the past. We always move forward.... We are going to leave something better for our children - not just here in the United States, but all around the world.
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In the past, there have been a range of treaties that divided Congress and every administration was able to get them through.
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In recent years, we've become enamored with our own past success. Lulled into complacency by the glitter of our own achievements. We've become accustomed to the title of Military Superpower, forgetting the qualities that got us there. We've become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get rich quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas, quality products and wise investments.
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