Barack Obama Quotes About Greatness

• Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

  Barack Obama

  Patience, Perseverance, Real

• Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

  Barack Obama

  Military, Patriotic, Pride

  2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 27 July 2004, Fleet Center, Boston

• Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. Americans know this. We know that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things we do better together.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Responsibility, Opportunity

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

• Greatness is never free; it must be earned.

  Barack Obama

  Greatness

• In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

  Barack Obama

  Greatness, Men, Journey

  First Presidential Inaugural Address, Delivered 20 January 2009

• It is moments like these that force us to try harder, and dig deeper, and to discover gifts we never knew we had - to find the greatness that lies within each of us.

  Barack Obama

  Lying, Greatness, Trying

  "Obama turns controversy into jokes, lesson at commencement". www.cnn.com. May 14, 2009.

• I know starting careers in troubled times is a challenge, but it is also a privilege. Because it's moments like these that force us to try harder, dig deeper and to discover gifts we never knew we had. To find the greatness that lies within each of us. So don't ever shy away from that endeavor. Don't stop adding to your body of work. I can promise that you will be the better for that continued effort as will be this nation that we all love.

  Barack Obama

  Lying, Greatness, America

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