Barack Obama – Inspirational speech to students:

Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield
High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across
America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in
kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s
understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who
are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what
grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you
could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years,
and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to
school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at
4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right
there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me
one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today
because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk
with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school
year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about
responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to
learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get
your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with
that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards,
supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working
where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive
parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you
fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those
teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work
it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your
education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has
something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.
That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles
in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English
class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to
come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it
until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator
or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student
government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an
education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to
be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a
good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and
just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of
your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re
learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest
challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to
cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect
our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history
and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and
make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you
develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost
our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can
help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school –
you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. Now I know it’s
not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives
right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I
was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always
able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a
father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of,
and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn
for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to
college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle
Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t
have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best
schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life
who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their
job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood
where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you
know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you
come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no
excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for
talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse
for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s
written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make
your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when
she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of
her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a
scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health,
on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain
cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of
which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to
do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when
bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed
to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs;
and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges
in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take
responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to
do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education –
and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as
doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a
book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in
your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or
bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all
kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better
care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll
all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we
can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful
without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or
being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You
won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely
relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything
the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the
most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it
was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and
he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once
said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define
you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do
differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it
means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean
you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.
You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note
the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your
schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or
read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper
before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do
that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows
you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something
new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor
– and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like
other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you
give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about
people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do
anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a
revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who
overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man
on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter
and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are
you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes
here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this
country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have
the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your
classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But
you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to
put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So
don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all
proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon
light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering
injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life
of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in
the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is
still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own
land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our
republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall
heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would
be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It
is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her
citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has
given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient
funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that
there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so,
we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of
freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of
Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing
drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is
the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of
racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to
the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's
children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering
summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.
And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content
will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be
neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the
bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold
which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we
must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by
drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle
on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights
of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead
us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their
presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.
And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors
of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the
fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the
cities. **We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller
ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of
their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only."** We
cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New
York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will
not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty
stream."1

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.
Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from
areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of
persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans
of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go
back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern
cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the
heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an
oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its
governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" --
one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands
with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain
shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be
made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it
together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a
beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to
pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom
together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to
sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of
the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from
every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed
up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old
Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!