African President Quotes

#1. I heard somebody say, 'Where's (Nelson) Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas.
George W. Bush, on the former South African president, who is still very much alive, Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2007

George W. Bush

#2. America is ready to elect its first African American President, especially one with light-skin and and no Negro dialect.

Mitch McConnell

#3. I'll be the first US president to not only visit Kenya and Ethiopia, but also to address the continent as a whole, building off the African summit that we did here which was historic and has, I think, deepened the kinds of already strong relationships that we have across the continent.

Barack Obama

#4. Beyond [Barack Obama] having made history as the first African-American president, I hope that he gets re-elected for what he does while in office, not for his skin color. I certainly believe he has the capacity.

Lenny Kravitz

#5. I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

Sufe Bradshaw

#6. If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up!

Madonna Ciccone

#7. Now goverments are a different thing. Presidents who do not want me. As I said, an African-American discriminates against an indigenous Bolivian. Well, they have their reasons, but sooner or later we will all be judged.

Evo Morales

#8. The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone.

Naomi Wolf

#9. America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States.

David Scott

#10. Are things getting better with each generation? Yes. It's quite interesting to be living in these times, for me to witness an African-American being elected president. It's quite extraordinary.

Lenny Kravitz

#11. There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job.

Johnnetta B. Cole

#12. Just because a black man is running the RNC doesn't mean black folks are going to, 'Oh, OK, I will be a Republican.' Just as with the election of President Obama. All the problems and concerns that are very important to African Americans don't get solved overnight.

Michael Steele

#13. In 2012 President Obama didn't go anywhere near African-American communities. Why? Because unemployment was so high there, he didn't want to address it.

Rudy Giuliani

#14. When President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, 65 percent of African Americans nationally and between 70 and 80 percent in the South were ineligible.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#15. I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans, Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race.

Condoleezza Rice

#16. As we women know, there are so many other hurdles that we have to cross that I would love it if we could stop having the race conversation so that we can get women further on. You know, a female president now that we have an African American president. Maybe we can get an Asian female, a gay person?

Octavia Spencer

#17. While we dance in the streets and pat ourselves on the back for being a nation great enough to reach beyond racial divides to elect our first African-American president, let us not forget that we remain a nation still proudly practicing prejudice.

Harvey Fierstein

#18. I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama!

Kerry Washington

#19. Let's face it many on the political right believe this President ought not to be there. They oppose him not for his policies and political view but for who he is, an African-American.

Sam Donaldson

#20. In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.

Bonnie Raitt

#21. Journalists become candidates for cardiac arrest when they see or hear an African American disagreeing with an African American. We would become inauthentic if we did not have disagreements with this president.

John Conyers

#22. I always believed there would be an African-American president. It was something I'd dreamed about, thought about, but certainly did not believe would happen in my lifetime.

Edward Brooke

#23. I think Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president of the United States. Let's not forget, this guy was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement, which was an effort to delegitimize the presidency of the first African-American president we have ever had.

Bernie Sanders

#24. Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide.

Henry Louis Gates

#25. I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

Kathryn Stockett

#26. 'The Cosby Show' - no one thought there's doctors and lawyers who are married and live in brownstones! Back then no one would have thought we would have an African-American president. They would have laughed in your face.

Keshia Knight Pulliam

#27. When people see Barack Obama, they don't necessarily see an African-American president. They see someone who is a child of immigrants. They see someone whose family has worked hard and struggled. And they see many similarities between themselves and Barack Obama.

Grace Meng

#28. If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#29. I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.

Jimmy Carter

#30. This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

Jennifer Granholm

#31. There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#32. We have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality.

Robert Mugabe

#33. In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.'

Allen West

#34. People in power will lie to keep it. Honesty doesn't make you less human.

Henry Johnson Jr

#35. I want you to know that I don't have any right, Malawi has no right to stop any president from coming to an African Union summit because that is an African Union meeting.

Joyce Banda

#36. Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and ... clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history.

Jay Leno

#37. If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. You take a look!

Mitt Romney

#38. Everyone says we have our first African American president. Has there ever been a Jewish president? An Italian president? They don't say a damn thing about that. You think we're still fighting the Civil War or something. If you want to mention it in passing, OK. But don't dwell on it.

Monte Irvin

#39. To see an African-American elected president means that this country is really finally coming full circle from the birth defect of slavery.

Condoleezza Rice

#40. George, I know you're tired. But President Lincoln, he didn't free us to be lazy and no good. He freed us to work hard and improve ourselves.-George's Grandmother.

George Dawson

#41. I think that there are some people on the so-called Left who might say we have to circle our wagons around the first African American president, and to me that is racism in reverse because his policies are actually still the racist policies of empire.

Cindy Sheehan

#42. I think there are white alumni out there who wouldn't mind having an African American president of their school, but would be reluctant to have an African American coach, because he represents the school so. I think it's just sheer backward racism.

Frank Deford

#43. It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'

Joe Haldeman

#44. There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.

Mark Kirk

#45. Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

Jesse Jackson

#46. Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as President, you won't see another black president for generations! I think he has set a very low bar and I think it's a shame for the African-American people.

Pope Francis

#47. During the 2008 campaign, I strongly endorsed Barack Obama for president. I did so early, when many Democratic leaders - including many prominent African-American politicians - believed the safe bet was to back then-front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Douglas Wilder

#48. The president is not doing well with African Americans. His popularity rating - his approval rating - with blacks: two percent. Two percent. That is somewhere between Mark Fuhrman and sickle cell anemia.

Bill Maher

#49. Introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard

Barack Obama