Barack Obama Quotes: 12 Inspirational Sayings To Celebrate Former President's 57th Birthday

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the first African-American to serve in office, was born Aug. 4, 1961.

Although Obama achieved an array of successes in his term as the POTUS, including the execution of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who ordered the 9/11 attacks, he grappled with racism and social perceptions of his multiracial heritage during his childhood.

"I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog that Toot and Gramps sent us, and that Santa was a white man," he wrote in the book “Dreams Of My Father.” "I kept these observations to myself, deciding that either my mother didn't see them or she was trying to protect me and that I shouldn't expose her efforts as having failed. I still trusted my mother’s love — but I now faced the prospect that her account of the world, and my father’s place in it, was somehow incomplete."

Here are a few inspirational quotes by Obama to celebrate his birthday, from Brainy Quote:

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

“We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn't a matter of political correctness. It's a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.”

“I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold country that we love. That's what I see. That's the America I know!”

“The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on.”

“Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They've got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law.”

“Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.”

“We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”

“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.”

“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.”

“Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.”

“What I'm asking for is hard. It's easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn't possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don't matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.”

“I'm the president of the United States. I'm not the emperor of the United States.”