[ 
Mood: Happy ]
I have just finished Barak Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and I will do a quick reveiw later. Right now I want to capture some of the quotes that made me pause and think.
"All the money in the world won’t boost student achievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard work and delayed gratification. But when we as a society pretend that poor children will fulfill their potential in dilapidated, unsafe schools with outdated equipment and teachers who aren’t trained in the subjects they teach, we are perpetrating, a lie on these children, and on ourselves."
"Justice Louis Brandeis once said: that in a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen."
About the Right wanting the law to restrict gay marriage.
"I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christian men and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faith without civil penalty."
On race and the inequalities in America
"The danger will come if we fail to recognize the humanity of Cristina and her family – if we withhold from them the rights and opportunities that we take for granted and tolerate the hypocrisy of a servant class in our midst;"
"America’s early leaders cautioned against idealistic attempts to export our way of life; according to John Quincy Adams, America should not go ‘abroad in search of monsters to destroy’ nor ‘become the dictatress of the world."