Interview Quotes

The Balance of Change: Inside vs. Outside the System

"I do believe the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen, that change happens because ordinary people get together and reimagine what their lives could be and push on the system. But I also think that you have to have people inside that system that can translate those impulses into laws and institutional practices."

— Barack Obama • 00:09:07

"And so what I believe continues to be that there has to be responses and pushback from civil society, from various institutions and individuals outside of government. But there also has to be people in government, in both parties, who say, well, no, you can't do that. You can't do that."

— Barack Obama • 00:15:14

"It requires people, judges, and people in the Justice Department and people throughout the government who take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It requires them to take those, that oath, seriously. And when that isn't happening, we start drifting into something that is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies."

— Barack Obama • 00:17:42

The Erosion of Trust and the American Identity

"What really makes America exceptional is that it's the only big country on Earth and maybe the only real superpower in history that is made up of people from every corner of the globe. And they show up, they come here, and the glue that holds us together is this crazy experiment called democracy."

— Barack Obama • 00:23:26

"And that backlash increasingly took forms in which we don't care what we said about democracy. We want to make sure that we maintain the status quo. And that, I think, is part of what we're going through right now."

— Barack Obama • 00:38:37

"And that's what's happened. That's what's happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that's not true, but we will pretend like it is. And that is dangerous."

— Barack Obama • 00:59:16

"One of the most important challenges I think our democracy faces is how do we regain some common sense of truth. Not absolute truth, but rough, basic truth. truth."

— Barack Obama • 00:54:34

"And so, if you ask me right now what is our biggest challenge, I go back to what I talked about earlier. Our biggest challenge right now is we need democracy and social cohesion and trust more than ever. And it's probably as weak as it's been since I've been alive."

— Barack Obama • 00:39:35

The Double-Edged Sword of Technology

"But what we have learned subsequently is that it can also be harnessed for bad. and it can be captured by authoritarian states. It can be captured by wealthy economic interests."

— Barack Obama • 01:08:11

"And it turned out that there's part of our reptilian brain that gets really attracted to, in addition to cat videos, it's attracted to anger and it's attracted to resentment and it's attracted to conspiracy theories and it's attracted to those aspects of ourselves that react rather than try to think."

— Barack Obama • 01:10:41

Rebuilding a Shared Identity and the Path Forward

"There is a story about America that includes everybody. It's a good story. It's a story about people who, it's a story about people who aren't pretentious and don't believe that anybody is worse than them or better than them."

— Barack Obama • 01:17:35

"And that story also has a deep history in this country, right, that says, okay, the first Americans aren't Americans, and slaves are not Americans. And women are sort of Americans as long as they're doing what their husbands say."

— Barack Obama • 01:24:47

"And what I've said to them is, well, what do you believe? Like, that's your starting point. What do you care about? What's your mission?"

— Barack Obama • 01:32:01

"And part of what happened was if you were relatively privileged to have been grown up in the United States of America during this period, you could be as progressive and socially conscious as you wanted, and you did not have to pay a price."

— Barack Obama • 01:41:35

"But if we are willing to attach ourselves to that better story in our own individual lives, in our communities, in our businesses, in our law firms, universities, in our places of worship, then I think the good will win out."

— Barack Obama • 02:00:48

"But if you want to deliver on change, then it's a game of addition, not subtraction, which means you have to find ways to make common ground with people who don't agree with you on everything, but agree with you on some things."

— Barack Obama • 02:02:38

"And that's not just the basis for democracy, but that's the basis for our long-term salvation."

— Barack Obama • 02:11:47