Actor

Quote

Obama

"And I am running for president, because the dreams of the American People can not be endangered anymore."

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

"I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully.  The more politically active black students.  The foreign students.  The Chicanos.  The Marxist professors and structural feminists."

"I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds.  One of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.  They were more than satisfied; they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."

"I had learned not to care.  I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years.  Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."

When he’s working on Wall Street, he’s creeped out by his visiting mother’s insistence on seeing her favorite film, the 1959 Brazilian art-house classic "Black Orpheus."  He belatedly realizes that his very fair-skinned mother is sexually attracted to dark men.  He pompously intones, "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."

"...I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old.  I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.  But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

"I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.  It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor.  I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying."

"If [black] nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."

"I am not in favor of concealed weapons.  I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."

"We're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous."

"I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community."

"The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity.  She doesn't.  But she is a typical white person..."

"That’s just how white folks will do you."

"We've got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money."

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.  And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.  And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

"The one thing that I want to insist on is that, as I travel around the country, the American people are a decent people.  Now they get confused sometimes.  You know, they listen to the wrong talk radio shows or watch the wrong TV networks, um, but they’re, they’re basically decent, they’re basically sound."

"Let me be absolutely clear.  Israel is a strong friend of Israel's.  It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration.  It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration.  So that policy is not going to change."

The Wife

"For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback."

"And things have gotten progressively worse throughout my lifetime -- through Democratic and Republican administrations -- it hasn't gotten better for regular folks."

"Don't get sick in this country -- not here.  Americans are in debt not because they live frivolously but because someone got sick.  And even with insurance, the deductibles and premiums are so high that people are still putting medication [and ?] treatments on credit cards."

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

"That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that.  That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

"So I am here right now because I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance at healing this nation."

"Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics."

"Barack is more than ready.  He'll be ready today, he'll be ready on day one, he'll be ready in a year from now, five years from now -- he is ready."

"And Barack Obama will require you to work."

"He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your division, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones, that you push yourselves to be better, and that you engage."

"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual -- uninvolved, uninformed."

"... as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know."

"If we win Iowa, then we can move to the world as it should be."

The 2008 General Election "is going to change the world."

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before."

"Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the Black community I was somehow obligated to this community and would utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit this community first and foremost."

"In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community … I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture."

Michelle contradicted the embedded story-line of her husband’s biography, when she said Obama's mother was "very young and very single when she had him."

"You need to celebrate what he represents even if you don’t vote for him."

Mom

The Mentor

"Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.  No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."

"America is still the number one killer in the world."

"White America got their wake-up call after 9/11.  White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." 

"We (Americans) are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!"

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.  America's chickens are coming home to roost." -- (commenting on the 9/11 attacks)

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.'  No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people.  God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.  God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

"When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" (to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan) "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."

"We (the United States of America) started the AIDS virus."

"Black women are being raped daily in Africa.  One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months."

"The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now.  Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."

Obama says, "Who knew?"

The Sister

The Friend