SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: You know, if you think
about this country, what's happened
is typically that we've gone in spurts.
Sometimes we make progress.
OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: The Civil Rights movement or abolition.
And then sometimes we go into dark times.
But the general trajectory is upward.
One of my favorite sayings Martin Luther King once
said, "The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice."
You know, you can't always see it, but on the horizon
it's moving in the direction of justice.
OPRAH WINFREY: OK.
So but you do not feel that these are dark times?
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think, I
think they're troubling times.
And I think they're troubling times for a couple of reasons.
I, I think they're troubling times because we
feel cynical about government. OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: We don't get a sense that the challenges
that we're facing in terms of educating our kids to compete,
making sure that everybody has health care,
and dealing with the energy problems that we've--
OPRAH WINFREY: You quoted, there's something,
I've never heard this phrase before.
You called it a coarsening of the culture.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Well, and, and you see it all the time.
OPRAH WINFREY: Our belief in materialism and all of that.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: And you see it,
you see it in our youth, and you see it at the highest reaches
of government-- a sense that it's
more important to be powerful or to be
wealthy than it is to do right.