Senator Barack Obama Quotes & Sayings

Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain. — Thomas Sowell

If he'd been negotiating Obamacare, Lincoln would have made the infamous 'Cornhusker Kickback' deal - $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska to secure a Senator's vote - in a heartbeat, even if the press howled as it did when Barack Obama agreed to it, forcing its cancellation. — Joe Klein

By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed. - Senator Obama — Barack Obama

Really, an historic night last night. You may have heard, Barack Obama will be the first black president of the United States of America ... Obama is also the first Democrat to receive more than 50 percent of the vote since Jimmy Carter, the first senator to be elected since Jack Kennedy, the first Muslim to be ... I said too much. — Jon Stewart

I've said this before and I'm very proud of it, that when it comes to judgment, having run a hard race against Senator [Barack] Obama at the time, he turned to me to be secretary of State. And when it comes to the biggest counterterrorism issues that we faced in this administration, namely whether or not to go after bin Laden, I was at that table, I was exercising my judgment to advise the president on what to do, on that, on Iran, on Russia on China, on a whole raft of issues. — Hillary Clinton

The Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, I want to improve it. I want to build on it, get the costs down, get prescription drug costs down. Senator Sanders wants us to start all over again. This was a major achievement of President [Barack] Obama, of our country. It is helping people right now. — Hillary Clinton

I could have possibly beaten Senator McCain in the primary. Then I could have been the candidate who lost to Barack Obama. — Mitt Romney

When people ask me why I'm amazed at what Barack Obama has accomplished, I tell them it's not because of what most of America and the world sees and knows of his history. It's because I witnessed what I can only describe as a bizarre turn of events that thrust him into position to even become a U.S. senator. — Don Lemon

In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected. — Elliott Abrams

There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries special relevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South's weapon of choice in its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade that effectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade, courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia used the filibuster to choke off any and every piece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fair employment bills, or anti-lynching bills. — Barack Obama

This book [Dreams from My Father] was more of a reflection on my public life, now as a U.S. senator and before that as a state senator; how my perspectives around the issues of the day are shaped by my background. — Barack Obama

There's a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from New York. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues over an issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument, blurted out: 'Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, I'm entitled to my own opinion." To which Moynihan frostily replied, "You are entitled to you own opinion, but you are not entitled to you own facts. — Barack Obama

Senator Barack Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country. — Joe Lieberman

There are some who might say that somebody named Barack Obama can't be elected senator in the state of Illinois. They're probably the same folks who said that a guy named Rod Blagojevich couldn't be elected governor of the state of Illinois. — Barack Obama

When Hillary Clinton ran against Senator [Barack] Obama she thought him naive because he thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies. I think those are exactly the people you have to talk to and you have to negotiate with. — Bernie Sanders

Maybe I'm too close to the two Democrats to be against either one. I went to law school with Barack Obama and worked in the Clinton White House, so I have connections and allegiances to both candidates [ ... ] But I cannot remain silent any longer while my own senator destroys the Democratic Party, and her own reputation, in a desperate and degrading effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's time for Senator Clinton to act like a leader that I know she can be. Hillary Clinton not only needs to defend Barack Obama, she needs to apologize to him. — Keith Boykin

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change. — Barack Obama

You see, even though back then Barack was a senator and a presidential candidate, to me, he was still the guy who'd picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door. He was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he'd found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small. — Michelle Obama

No president in modern times has come to power with less political experience or less managerial experience. On the other hand, no president has come to power with a clearer record of political extremism. As senator, Barack Obama had the most left-wing voting record in the Senate ... — Bob Tyrrell

Republicans also have to start to look at talent recruitment. Eight years ago Barack Obama was a no-name state senator. So I think we need to look outside the Beltway and start to look at a younger, more diverse pool of people and tap them to run for office instead of continuously tapping the same type of self-funder individual that Republicans seem to go after every time. — Andrea Tantaros

I've been critical of Hillary Clinton and [Barack] Obama, for sure. But John McCain had a proven record as a senator. He also ran for president [in 2016]. But he got a lot of stuff done while he was a United States senator and still does. — Jeb Bush

Look, we live in a celebrity culture and sometimes you get caught in the wave and the buzz and a lot of it's flattering but, you know, one of the things that I try to remind people of is, is that I was in politics as a state senator operating in obscurity for many years. Before that I was a community organizer working in low income communities in Chicago and nobody knew my name then. And so, having involved myself in public service for a pretty long time without getting too much attention, hopefully I can keep some of the attention that I'm getting now in perspective. — Barack Obama

The election of Senator Barack Obama brought jubilation across Africa, where millions celebrated him as 'one of their own.' — George Ayittey

We have to deal with the 11 million individuals who are here illegally. The bill that Senator [Marco] Rubio put forward, I think is a great place to start. — Barack Obama

Senator Joe Biden is pretty clean and articulate for a white guy. — Barack Obama