Portrait: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza · Public domain
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
This page skews toward one night: the December 2012 prayer vigil in Newtown after the Sandy Hook shooting, which Obama called the hardest day of his presidency. 'I'm asking you to believe -- not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours' is the 2017 farewell address, a deliberate callback to the campaign grammar of 2008. His speeches are exhaustively transcribed, so outright fabrications are rare; what circulates wrongly is usually satire mistaken for citation.
And then there were the scenes of the schoolchildren, helping one another, holding each other, dutifully following instructions in the way that young children sometimes do; one child even trying to encourage a grown-up by saying, “I know karate. So it’s okay. I’ll lead the way out.”
Barack Obama
Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
Barack Obama
I’m asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours.
Barack Obama
In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other, and you’ve cared for one another, and you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God’s grace, that love will see you through.
Barack Obama
This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
Barack Obama
We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.
Barack Obama
