President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of collective responsibility and shared values in achieving a modern American Dream.
William J. Clinton highlights President Obama’s vision for America, advocating for a 21st-century understanding of the American Dream that focuses on inclusivity, mutual support, and collaboration. Instead of individual success alone, this vision calls for a collective effort to ensure that opportunities and prosperity are accessible to all citizens, promoting a society where responsibilities are shared for the greater good.
In practice
This quote can be used during a community meeting to inspire collaboration.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
God loves the saints as the purchase of his Son's blood. They cost him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was willing to expend his Son's blood to gain them, will not deny his power to keep them.
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.