Sir Isaac Newton- Learning English

Sir Isaac Newton

1642–1727

Google searches: 1 million+ per monthNumber of books written about this person: c. 400,000

The discoverer of the calculus just edged out Albert Einstein for the 10th spot.
Google searches  alone would have netted Einstein a place on the list, at 6.1 million searches
per month, but many more books have been written about Newton. Einstein is on track to 
break his record in far fewer  than 286 years, but even then, Einstein would have had no
foundation on which to base his theories of Relativity had Newton not existed. 95% of all
classical mechanics is built on Isaac Newton alone.

He generalized the binomial theorem, invented the reflecting telescope, coined the word 
“gravity” and gave the Roman Catholic Church’s self-important hegemony over geocentrism
its final knockout blow. Copernicus and Galileo had to face inquisitions, but no one ever
attempted to reproach Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Perhaps arguing against someone
else’s observations is inane enough, but arguing against math itself was in Newton’s case,
impossible. He proved the former two’s theories on heliocentrism, and explained why and how
every single macroscopic object in the entire Universe moves as it does. He did all this by
 himself and still had time to investigate elements and principles of optics, and invent the pet
door, although he was too busy ever to have sex. He died a virgin at 84.

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci- Learning English

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

1452–1519 

400 years before the French. It is a precursor to what we consider a

machine gun, with multiple barrels firing all at once. Da Vinci 
invented the pivoting scissors by bolting two knives together for 

shearing cloth.His sculptures are not as well known as those of 

Michelangelo, but da Vinci envisioned a gigantic horse sculpted 

out of poured bronze, which was impossible to make with the

 technology of his day (the sculpture would 

have broken apart under its own weight). But it was completed in 1998 and there are three 

models of it around the world, one in Milan, Italy, one in 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, and one based in Florence, Italy that is 

shipped around the world for display. They are 24 feet high and the largest horse 

statues ever constructed.

Da Vinci was also a pretty good painter.

William Shakespeare

1564–1616

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William Shakespeare- Learning English

William Shakespeare

1564–1616

Google searches: 7.4 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 1 million

The man with the lion’s share of the percentage of votes for greatest writer
 in English or language in human history is sure to be the source for 
quite a few words and phrases now common in his native language. A good 50% of common 
English phrases come from the King James Bible, and 
possibly 30% of the rest come from the Bard. If you’ve ever said, “It’s all 
Greek to me;” “food for the gods;” “all that glitters is not gold;” “a sorry 
sight;” “dead as a doornail;” “come what may;” “with one fell swoop;” or 
“all’s well that ends well;” then “by Jove” you’re quoting Shakespeare.

Egil Aarvik, of the Committee for the Nobel Prize, once said that 
Shakespeare would have been the only person in history to win more 
than one prize for his literature. There is no rule against this, and had 
he lived into the 20th Century, his plays would have certainly deserved 
one, but his sonnets alone are worth the bodies of work for which other laureates have been 
honored. What is the most famous quote in all of 
English literature? Probably “to be or not to be.”What’s most impressive 
about his fame is that we know very little at all about Shakespeare himself, 
the man and his life. He only had a grammar school education and worked 
as an actor before becoming a playwright. What makes Shakespeare so 
great is his seamless blend of the finest poetry, profound, multifaceted philosophy, and a 
lively wit. Do it one time and you’ll win quite a few 
awards and be thought a great writer. Shakespeare did it 37 times, and 
that doesn’t account for his 154 sonnets, the bulk of the English repertory. Hamlet and King 
Lear are universally acclaimed masterpieces, benchmarks against which all other drama, before 
and after, is judged.

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Paul the Apostle of Tarsus- Learning English

Paul the Apostle of Tarsus

c. 5–c. A.D. 67

Google searches: 3.35 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 7 million

Paul is quite possibly more responsible for the dissemination of 

Christianity, its ideals, theology,  and principles, than anyone else. 

He is venerated in all branches, as a saint in many, or at least as a 

profoundly respected teacher, preacher, and the chief Christian apologist. 

And he did all this via 13 letters to various churches and people 

throughout Asia Minor.

He was the first person to write anything that was later canonized into 

what we call the New Testament. He probably wrote his first epistle, to 

the churches in Galatia, in about A.D. 50, give or take 5 years. Mark 

wrote his Gospel 5 to 10 years later. Paul’s theological thesis throughout 

his 13 or so Epistles is a more detailed statement of Jesus’s philosophy 

of ethics and salvation given in the Gospels. Paul’s central point is that 

all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Son of God, Savior of the 

world, rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, and you will 

not die. Your transition may be painful, but you’ll go to Heaven. If that’s 

all you have to do, as most people have accepted his teaching, it’s 

obvious why Paul’s brand of evangelism caught on so quickly, firmly, and widely. 

He is far more immediately known than any of the Twelve Apostles, only rivaled, through the fame of the popes, by Peter. By his death, he 

ermanently cemented his legacy for the ages: he was arrested in Rome 

for inciting political discord and beheaded south of the city center, at 

what is now San Paolo alle Tre Fontane, or the basilica of Saint Paul at 

the Three Fountains.

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Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)- Learning English

Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

c. 563–c. 483 B.C.

Google searches: 4 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 7 million

You might be surprised to know that most of the people who google Buddha are not Buddhists.
 In the Western Hemisphere and throughout Europe, Buddhism is not as well understood as the 
three major monotheisms. A few clarifications:

Gautama was probably born in Kapilavastu or Lumbini, Nepal in about 563 B.C., about 24 years 
after Babylon sacked Jerusalem. Gautama was a mortal man who attained Nirvana, or spiritual 
awakening and peace of mind, at the age of 35, while seated under a Pipal tree, now referred to 
as the Bodhi tree, in Bodh Gaya, India. The tree growing there now was planted in 288 B.C. 
from a seed of the original. Buddha sat in meditation for 49 days until he attained the knowledge 
of how to thoroughly end suffering for all people on Earth. The people do have to follow his 
teaching in order to free themselves from the various griefs of life.

This is called the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right concentration, right 
speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness. If you hold to all these, 
you will be able to put away all worries and you will be truly happy and unaffected by anything. 
Buddha rejected the notion of any literature being infallible, and argued that truth must be 
experienced to be known.

Gautama, the Supreme Buddha, is worshipped in Hinduism as well, as one of the ten 
representations of Vishnu, who is the god above all others. Baha’i also venerates Gautama as a 
mortal manifestation of God, who descended to teach mankind to love one another and how to 
be happy. Gautama is traditionally said to have died in about 411 B.C., at the age of 150 or so. 
Modern scholars place his death at about 483, at the age of 80.

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Moses- Learning English

Moses

c. 1300–c. 1180 B.C.

Google searches: 2.7 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 8 million

Moses is revered but not worshipped by all three major monotheisms, Judaism, 
Christianity, and Islam, as well as Baha’i. He is regarded as the greatest prophet of
 the Old Testament; the liberator of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt; their 
leader into Canaan, the Promised Land; and their lawgiver, who relayed God’s commandments
 to the Jews, and founded much of Jewish life and tradition.

The Pharaoh’s daughter, usually named Bithiah, found the infant Moses in a basket floating 
in the Nile and took him as her own son. She named him after the Hebrew verb “to draw,”
 since she drew him out of the river. No information is given on Moses’s life, except that 
he was raised in the Egyptian noble household, and that one day he saw an Egyptian 
beating a Hebrew slave and saved the Hebrew by killing the Egyptian. He then hid in the 
wilderness, and met Jethro, who was a follower of the precursor faith to Islam.

Jethro gave him Zipporah, his daughter, to be his wife, and Moses met God for the first 
time, who showed himself in the form of a burning bush. Moses then bravely returned to
Egypt and, with God’s help, forced the Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses was about 80
years old when this Exodus began. They wandered the desert wilds for 40 more years, received
God’s law through Moses, built an ark into which the law was placed, and finally reached
 a land flowing with milk and honey, which God promised them. Moses, however,
had acted arrogantly when he struck the stone from which water sprang for the Israelites, and
so God refused to allow him entrance into Canaan. Moses died at 120 years and God buried
him in the Moab valley opposite Mount Nebo. There is a memorial to him there today.

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Abraham- Learning English

Abraham

c. 1812–c. 1637 B.C.

Google searches: 9.1 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 2 million

The google searches for Abraham the Old Testament prophet are not as reliable as 
those for Moses or Adolf Hitler, since quite a few famous historical or fictitious people 
have been named Abraham. The top three most famous are Abraham of the 
Bible, Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham van Helsing. But if you were to go, say, 
the Philippines, and ask the first passerby who Abraham Lincoln was, they might 
actually not know. Among well over 99% of the world’s cultures and societies, 
you will not have that problem when asking about the prophet called Abraham.

He is revered by all three monotheisms, as well as Baha’i, as a prophet, and one 
of the first,  if not the first, persons of the Middle East to believe in a single 
God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are referred to as “the Abrahamic 
religions.” In the Bible, God makes a covenant with Abraham because of his 
devout, unswerving faith in God, while everyone around him follows the 
newest god to take everyone’s fancy. This covenant is marked by circumcision. 
God then tests the conviction of Abraham’s faith in him by demanding that he kill 
his firstborn son, Isaac, to glorify God. Abraham does not hesitate, but takes Isaac 
up to the top of a mountain and is about to kill him when an angel arrives and tells 
him to stop. God is i mmensely impressed and blesses Abraham with fruitfulness: 
he will be the father of many nations.

Today, Abraham is precisely that. Muslims believe that it was not Isaac, but Ishmael, 
his other 
son, whom God told Abraham to sacrifice, and Muslims believe that Ishmael’s lineage 
led to the next entry. The site of the near sacrifice is traditionally deemed to be where 
the Dome of the Rock sits today. This shrine is sacred to all three Abrahamic religions.

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Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh- Learning English

Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh

c. A.D. 570–632

Google searches: 13.6 million+ per month

Number of books: incalculable

To non-Muslims, Muhammad founded Islam. To Muslims, he did not found anything, because 
the religion, called Islam, was already there, and had to be restored to its proper 
maintenance. Muslims Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh

c. A.D. 570–632 that Muhammad restored the religion and unified it under the philosophies 
God imparted to him in revelations he wrote down. These became the Q’uran. Islam is the 
Arabic noun for “a surrendering,” or “a yielding,” in this case to the will of Allah. 
Muhammad was born about A.D. 570 in Makkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia. He had 13 wives, 
which is acceptable and encouraged in Muslim cultures.

Muhammad’s status as second most famous person in history is especially remarkable given 
that it is illegal according to Islamic law to depict Muhammad in any way (which is why 
you don’t see him in the above picture). That law dictates that Muhammad is the last prophet 
to have been sent by God to teach mankind the ways of peace and righteousness, and that he 
is too holy to be viewed by our sinful eyes. For this reason, very few films have been made 
about him. The most notable was The Message (1977), the premiere of which incited 
suicide bombings throughout the Middle East and protests around the world, until 
everyone realized that Muhammad is not actually depicted; rather, the camera’s point of 
view represents him: the film is seen through his eyes.

If you’d like to know, there is nothing in the Q’uran that states, “To kill Americans, both 
civil and military, is the duty of every Muslim who is able.” That nonsense was concocted 
by various Middle Eastern leaders over the years, mostly in the last half of the 20th Century 
and beyond. These leaders know full well that knowledge is power and have done their level 
best to hoard literacy education from the public. The literacy rate in Yemen is currently 
about 70%, which is terrible compared to “more civilized” countries like the USA, 
England, Germany, and Japan. And because the Middle Eastern Muslim public largely 
cannot read the Q’uran, the governments disseminate anti-American, anti-Western 
lies to indoctrinate them into hatred.

Muhammad died on 8 June A.D. 632 in Medina, Saudi Arabia, having united the whole of 
the Middle East under a single God, whose name is Allah. There are many spellings of 
Muhammad, including Mohammed, Moammar, Mehmet, Mahomet, and others. 
Because of him, Muhammad is the most common given name in the world, with 
about 200 million carriers. “Muhammad” means “praised.”

If you anticipated Muhammad, you probably anticipated the next entry.

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Jesus of Nazareth-Learning English

Jesus of Nazareth

c. 5 B.C.–c. A.D. 28

Google searches: 24.9 million+ per month

Number of books: incalculable

There’s really no need to explain just what the four Gospels say Jesus did to become
 famous, but in the interest of fairness, here are the claims: he was born to a virgin, 
died at about the age of 33 sometime around the year A.D. 33 (plus or minus 5), the 
most famous victim of crucifixion, and rose from the dead on his own power 3 days
later, ascended into Heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father
as a manifestation of that God’s only offspring. You can look up the various
miracles attributed to him. There are just over 7 billion people on Earth as of this list,
 and just about one-third precisely, 33.32%, of them, worship Jesus as “the Christ of
God.” We may fairly say that these 2.33 billion people know very well who he was/is, and
specifics about his life.

It is also indisputable that those followers of Islam and Judaism both know perfectly 
well who he was. There are some 1.75 billion Muslims on Earth today, or 25% of the 
global population, and since Jesus is venerated as a very important prophet of their 
religion, to whom they say Muhammad spoke when he sprang to Heaven on a horse, 
Jesus is certainly not unknown to them. There are about 1.3 billion atheists the world 
over, and at least 98% of those people certainly know all about Jesus. It is highly
 possible that the only people on Earth who have no idea who he was, or anything about 
him, are those people who belong to the 100 or so primitive, uncontacted tribes 
remaining around the world, the most well known across the Internet of which are the 
Envira people of the Brazilian-Peruvian border area, deep in the Amazon Jungle. They 
have been photographed from helicopter. It is doubtful they know of Jesus, or 
Muhammad, or anyone else on this list, as they are 100% isolated from the rest 
of the world’s societies.

Google claims that 129,864,880 books have been written and bound throughout 
human history and which still survive in book form in some library in the world. That 
is not as high a number as you might have expected, but we are speaking of 
different volumes, so only one of the 25 million copies of the Bible printed every single 
year counts toward this total. Out of these c. 130 million books, it is estimated that 40% 
are about Jesus. This percentage includes books about Christianity in general, 
whether evangelical (or anti-evangelical) or historical. Richard Dawkins’s The God
 Delusion focuses on God in general, but pays special attention to Christianity, as any 
atheist apology must, since Christianity is the most popular religion, and thus 
Dawkins’s book counts as 1 book about Jesus, as it counts as 1 book about Muhammad.
So there are some 52 million different books circulating the world right now that are in 
some way concerned with Jesus, the man who may have lived, who may have walked 
on water, and risen from the dead. The Gospel of John, one of the 52 million books 
written about Jesus, ends with this passage: “Jesus did many other things as well. 
If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not 
have room for the books that would be written.”

Just missed the cut (many): Confucius, Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Einstein, 
Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Jack the Ripper, Josef Stalin, 
Mao Zedong, and more.

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Adolf Hitler- Learning English

Adolf Hitler

1889–1945

Google searches: 6.1 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 175,000

We have covered Hitler many times on Listverse, but rarely 
from a somewhat historiometric perspective. We all know 
that he remains the primary cause of WWII. He instigated it to 
suit two profound desires: to become the most powerful 
person on Earth, preferably in history, if not to rule the 
whole world; and, for his own enjoyment, to cause as much 
pain as possible against all those he deemed responsible for 
Germany’s humiliating and miserable defeat in WWI, and 
its squalid poverty between the wars. Germany was forced to 
pay every other nation’s wartime expenses after the First 
World War, and this utterly destroyed Germany’s economy. 
The Deutschmark became so worthless that children burned 
millions of them at once to keep warm in the streets.

The Jews, meanwhile, largely kept their money in gold and 
jewelry, safe in international banks. Gold and diamonds 
do not depreciate, and Hitler seized on his own hatred of 
the Jews’ prosperity in the Interbellum to sway as many 
people to his side as possible. Add to this a supreme 
mastery of oratory, and history is about to suffer a severe 
catastrophe. WWII resulted in more deaths than any other 
war, up to 71 million, and Hitler is the most to blame. 
He knew and was not ashamed. He was despised and happy 
about it.

He is routinely listed alongside the following names on lists 
of the most evil people, real or fictitious, in history, especially 
those of public polls: “the Devil;” “Satan;” “Lucifer;” “Stalin.” 
The current US President (whoever it is) is usually next, 
although recently elected popes can unseat him. It can be argued 
that Hitler shaped the 20th Century more than any other person, 
except possibly Einstein, and Hitler is the only person of the 
20th or 21st Century on this list. Quite an impressive ranking 
to have been dead for only 68 years.

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Barack Obama- Learning English

Biography for

Barack Obama 

Date of Birth

4 August 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 

Birth Name

Barack Hussein Obama II 

Nickname

Barry 

Bama 

Rock 

The One 

No Drama Obama 

Height

6' 1" (1.85 m) 

Mini Biography

Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, 
and a black Kenyan father,Barack Obama Sr., who were both young 
college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for 
Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately 
returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to 
Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as 
simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. 
He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his 
grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather 
was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into 
Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him 
regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official 
business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten.

Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial 
tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small 
Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side 
residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended 
Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American 
editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious 
judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back 
in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment 
discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also 
began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married 
Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. Eventually he was elected to 
the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park 
and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side.

In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, 
representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a 
rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic 
National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, 
and despite having only four years of national political experience, 
he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of 
the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to 
that position. Obama was reelected to a second term in November 2012.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous 

Spouse

Michelle Obama

(3 October 1992 - present) 2 children

Trivia

His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" 
in Arabic.

In the Kenyan town where his father was born, the long-brewed 
"Senator" brand of beer has been nicknamed "Obama."

U.S. Senator from Illinois since 3 January 2005.

Won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for the CD version of his 
autobiography "Dreams From My Father" (2006).

Lived in Hyde Park in Chicago.

On "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (1993), he revealed that President
 George W. Bush nicknamed him "Bama" and "Rock".

The movie he saw on his first date with Michelle Obama was 
Do the Right Thing (1989).

Related to Park Overall.

Has two daughters, Malia Obama (born in 1998) and Sasha Obama 
(born in 2001).

Candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 US presidential 
election. Several celebrities including; Halle Berry, George Clooney, 
Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Topher Grace, Macy Gray, Bruce Springsteen, 
Oprah Winfrey Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Hayden Panettiere, 
Zachary Quinto, Eddie Murphy and John Cleese support his 2008 
presidential campaign. Robert De Niro gave his endorsement at the 
same rally where Barack was endorsed by Caroline and Ted Kennedy.

Enjoys playing basketball and poker.

At his wife's suggestion, he quit smoking before his campaign to 
win the Democratic nomination began. 
His paternal relatives still live in Kenya. Confessed teenage drug 
experiences in his memoirs "Dreams from My Father". One of his 
ancestors was Mareen Duvall, also an ancestor of actor Robert Duvall.

Shares his surname with a small city in western Japan, which 
means "small shore" in Japanese. Plays basketball.

Born to Barack Obama Sr. (1936-1982) and Ann Dunham (1942-1995) 
married from 1961 to 1965. Named one of Time magazine's "100 
most influential people in the world" list in 2005 and 2007. Chosen as 
one of "10 people would change the world" by New Statesman 
magazine (2005). Won his second Grammy Award for Best Spoken 
Word Album for "The Audacity of Hope" (2008).

On June 3, 2008 he won the Montana primary election giving him 
enough delegates to become the first Black American presidential 
candidate to win a major political party's presumptive nomination 
for the office of President of the United States.

Is a die-hard Chicago White Sox fan. More than 215,000 people 
attended his speech in Berlin on 24 July 2008.

Has one half-sister, Maya, born to his mother and stepfather in 1970.

Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Les guignols de l'info" 
(1988). Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham died 
Sunday November 2, 2008 in the early evening in Honolulu from cancer. 
She was 86. Is the first African-American man to be elected President 
of the United States (November 2008).

When elected President, he won the battleground states of Florida, 
Virginia and Colorado - all of which had voted Republican in 2004.

Is the first American president to be born in Hawaii.

Was the 27th lawyer to be elected American president.

Was elected to be the 44th president of the Unites States of America 
on 4 November, 2008. As a child growing up in Hawaii, his classmates 
knew him as Barry. Presidential campaign slogan: "Change we can 
believe in". Is primarily of Kenyan and English ancestry. Favorite 
movies are Casablanca (1942), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Godfather (1972), 
and The Godfather: Part II (1974). Is a fan of "The Wire" (2002).

First ever US President to address a Muslim community at an 
inaugural speech. Shares the same birthday as long-time White 
House correspondent and journalism legend, Helen Thomas. On her 
89th birthday (and his 48th), they celebrated by blowing birthday 
cupcakes together in front of the press corps. First United States 
Senator to be elected President since John F. Kennedy. October 2009, 
won the Nobel Peace Prize. Fourth US President to win a Nobel 
Peace Prize (2009) after Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson 
(1919) and Jimmy Carter (2002).

Defended his decision not to issue a formal written statement on 
the death of controversial pop star Michael Jackson on 25 June 2009.

Half-brother of Maya Soetoro-Ng. Brother-in-law of Konrad Ng.

Merited a position in Time magazine's - The 100 Most Influential 
People in the World ("Leaders" category) - with an homage contributed byDavid Remnick (Issue: May 10, 2010).

Received a gift of a Portuguese water dog from Senator Ted Kennedy 
and his wife Victoria. Because the particular breed is reportedly hypo-allergenic, the First Family and friends were highly unlikely to suffer any allergic reactions in the pet's presence. [2009] Obama's appearance 
on "The View" (1997) (29 July 2010) made him the first ever sitting US President to appear as a guest on a daytime TV talk show.

Obama's birthplace of Hawaii makes him the first U.S. president not 
born in the continental United States. Brother-in-law of basketball 
player, coach and author Craig Robinson. Son of Barack Obama Sr..

The character of Matt Santos in 'The West Wing' is based on him.

The first US President to be born after the Vietnam War started.

Is a big fan of the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man and 
collected the comics as a youth. Counts "Homeland" (2011) as one 
of his favorite TV shows. First U.S. President to be personally 
presented with an Apple iPad 2 by Steve Jobs before it was officially 
released domestically. Obama is frequently seen using Apple devices.

Notable for being the first United States President to participate 
in social media. He is the first President to have a personal 
Facebook page and a Twitter account, and the first President 
to hold Q&A sessions via those forums and YouTube. He is also 
the first sitting President to own and use an iPod, Blackberry 
(custom made for security purposes), and iPad.

His daily newspapers are The New York Times, The Wall Street 
Journal, and The Washington Post. He claims to not watch cable 
TV news stations. Introduced the 50th anniversary television 
broadcast of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Can speak Indonesian to a certain degree, having lived in Indonesia 
for a number of years during his childhood. The TV presidential 
election campaign commercial for Obama featured, Carl Reiner, 
Garry Marshall, Larry Gelbart, Valerie Harper, Danny DeVito, Rhea 
Perlman, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara (slogan: "This Ain't Funny, 
it's a serious election. Don't vote out of fear, vote for hope - Vote 
for Obama"). 

Was a classmate of Hill Harper's at Harvard Law School.

First United States President to be elected twice with over 50% of 
the popular vote since Ronald Reagan and the first Democratic 
President elected as such since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

First two-term President to take the Oath of Office four times. 
The first time, during his televised first inauguration, Chief Justice 
John Roberts made a mistake while reading the Oath of Office, 
which Obama repeated to avoid embarrassment. A few days later, 
he called Roberts into his office to do it again, and this time read 
it correctly. By law, the President is sworn in at noon on January 20. 
In 2013, the month and date fell on a Sunday, but to comply with 
the Blue Law (no work on Sunday), he was sworn in privately in 
the Oval Office, and then again publicly the next day. The two 
before him that were sworn in on Monday, January 21st, were 
Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 and Ronald Reagan in 1985.

One of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the 
World (2013).

Personal Quotes

[from keynote speech given at the 2004 Democratic party national 
convention] There's not a liberal America and a conservative America. 
There's the United States of America. We worship an awesome God 
in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around 
our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue 
states, and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots 
who opposed the war, and patriots who supported it. We are one 
people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all 
of us defending the United States of America. And it lives on in 
those Americans -- young and old, rich and poor, black and white, 
Latino and Asian and Native American, gay and straight -- who 
are tired of a politics that divides us and want to recapture the 
sense of common purpose that we had when John Kennedy was 
President of the United States of America.

[regarding former President Bill Clinton's support for his wife--and 
Obama's opponent for the 2008 Democratic presidential 
nomination--Hillary Rodham Clinton] Sometimes I don't know who 
I'm running against. [when asked whether he would call on 
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton to release their tax returns, 
after Hilary loaned $5 million of her own money to her campaign] 
I'll just say that I've released my tax returns. That's been a policy 
I've maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve 
to know where you get your income from. But I'll leave it up to you 
guys to chase it down . . . I think we set the bar in terms of 
transparency and disclosure that has been a consistent theme of 
my campaign and my career in politics. In the unlikely story that 
is America, there has never been anything false about hope. When 
I am this party's [Democratic party] nominee, my opponent will not 
be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq; or that I gave 
[George W. Bush] the benefit of the doubt on Iran; or that I 
supported Bush-Cheney [former VP Dick Cheney] policies of not 
talking to leaders that we don't like. And he will not be able to 
say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or 
not it is okay for America to torture - because it is NEVER okay. 
That's why I am in it. As President, I will end the war in Iraq. We 
will have our troops home in sixteen months. I will close Guantanamo. 
I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. 
And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st 
century - nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. And I will send once more a message to those 
yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. 
Your future is our future. And our moment is now."

This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are 
stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian 
children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This 
time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids 
can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody 
else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they 
are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century 
economy. Not this time. Change is coming to America. In America, 
we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we 
idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with 
both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are 
not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective 
institutions and organizations.

In Washington, the call this the Ownership Society, and it is 
especially tempting because each of us believes we will always 
be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the 
next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald 
Trump says: "You're fired!"

In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You 
know we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things 
with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams are 
not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective 
institutions and organizations.

In Washington, we call this the Ownership society, and it is 
especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be 
the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next 
Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump 
says: "You're fired!"

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. 
The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The 
Chicanos. The Marxist professors and the structural feminists and
 punk rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore 
leather jackets. At night in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, 
Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground our 
cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the 
walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were 
alienated. (visiting Ireland) My name is Barack Obama of the 
Moneygall O'Bamas. And I've come to find the apostrophe we lost 
along the way.

Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is 
somehow a part of the larger story of how we're going to reshape 
America in a way that is less mean spirited and more generous. I 
mean I really hope to be a part of the transformation of this country.

I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me. And I'm not interested in isolating myself. I feel good when I'm engaged in what 
I think are the core issues of the society, and those issues to me are 
what's happening to poor folks in this society.

It's crucial that people don't see my election as a sign of progress in 
the broader sense that we don't sort of point to a Barack Obama any 
more than you point to a Bill Cosby or a Michael Jordan and say "Well 
things are hunky dory".

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the 
Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the 
essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, or at least as it's been interpreted and Warren court 
interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a 
charter of negative liberties, Says what the states can't do to you. 
Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say 
what the Federal government or the state government must do on 
your behalf, and that has shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies 
of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights 
movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to 
lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on 
the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of 
powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some 
ways we still suffer from that.

Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan
 Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own 
electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built 
entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing
 legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere 
political correctness or reverse racism.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small 
towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton 
administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said somehow these communities are going to
 regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get 
bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who 
aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment 
as a way to explain their frustrations.

It's great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton 
ballroom, or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper.

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are 
same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have 
been sitting around the dinner table and we're talking about their 
friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn't dawn on 
them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently. 
It doesn't make sense to them and frankly, that's the kind of thing 
that prompts a change in perspective. (May 9, 2012)

I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I have 
talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about 
members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed 
monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising 
kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines 
or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel 
constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they 
are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point 
I've just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to 
go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to 
get married. (May 9, 2012)

I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do 
everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from 
purchasing weapons. And we should check someone's criminal 
record before they can check out a gun seller. A mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. 
These steps shouldn't be controversial. They should be common sense.

We can't continue to sustain a situation in which some countries are maintaining surpluses, others massive deficits and there never is the 
kind of adjustment with respect to currency that would lead to a more balanced growth pattern. My image of Onyango, faint as it was, has 
always been of an autocratic man - a cruel man, perhaps. But I had 
also imagined him an independent man, a man of his people, opposed 
to white rule... What Granny had told us scrambled that image 
completely, causing ugly words to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger.

The only way my life makes sense is if - regardless of culture, race, 
religion, tribe - there is this commonality, these essential human 
truths and passions and hope and moral precepts, that we can reach 
out beyond our differences. If that is not the case, then it is pretty 
hard for me to make sense of my life. That is the core of who I am.

[on election night, November 4, 2008] This is your victory. I will ask 
you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been 
done in America for 221 years - block by block, brick by brick, callused 
hand by callused hand.

[on the political choice as he sees it in 2012] This isn't a matter of 
who's more patriotic or who is more empathetic toward people or who 
is nicer. It's a hardheaded assessment of what makes our economy 
grow. And the facts are on my side in this argument.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and 
facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day 
all the time, is because we're hardwired not to think clearly when we're scared. What I wake up determined to accomplish every single day is 
making the best decisions I can. And the only thing then to guide you
is what you genuinely think is best for the country. Because if you start 
trying to guess what's going to be most politically advantageous or 
try to game all that stuff out, you'll get lost very quickly.

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our 
homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other 
countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen. I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. 
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped 
to create this unbelievable American system that we have allowed you 
to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a 
business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim 
later. As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our 
military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every 
day, and I will always defend their right to do so.

If you can't beat your opponent's ideas, you distort those ideas and 
maybe make some up. If you don't have a record to run on, than you 
paint your opponent as someone people should run away from.

[on Donald Trump's refusal to trust the validity of the President's 
personal documents] This all dates back to when we were growing up 
together in Kenya.

I've always believed that education begins at home, with parents who 
take responsibility - who read to their kids, set limits on the TV and 
instill a lifelong love of learning. But there is no substitute for a good 
school or the teacher who stands in front of the classroom.

[to the crowd at the 2013 Presidential Inauguration] I want to look 
out one more time. I'm not going to see this again.

The truth is that we have steadily become a more diverse and tolerant 
country that embraces people's differences and respect people who are 
not like us. That's a profoundly good thing. That's one of the strengths
of America. [on the 2012 campaign trail] If you buy into the cynicism 
that the change we fought for isn't possible, well, change will not 
happen. Other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests, 
the people with ten million dollar checks who are trying to buy this 
election. [on Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma)] The people of 
Oklahoma are lucky to have someone like Tom representing them in Washington - someone who speaks his mind, sticks to his principles 
and is committed to the people he was elected to serve. Each of us 
still hopes the other will see the light. But in the meantime, we'll 
settle for being friends. [ at the 2009 White House Correspondents 
Dinner] Mother's Day is a tough holiday for Rahm Emanuel because 
he's not used to saying the word 'day' after 'mother'.

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