David Garrow

“The Barack who was so successful in Illinois in a Republican-controlled legislative situation for most of his time and who was a very outspoken progressive voice, that's not the man who we ended up having as president.”

“King would certainly be overjoyed by Barack Obama's inauguration, but we must avoid, and indeed reject, any careless claims that Obama's swearing in marks the fulfillment of King's dream.”

“I think American life would be better without Twitter, and I think we'd have a better country if the president was not on Twitter. What people say in a bar or a pub doesn't necessarily merit being memorialised.”

“Once you choose to run for president of the United States and succeed, your earlier life, your biography, is a major part of American history.”

“Healthcare in the U.S. remains a dire mess, and the Obama presidency, unfortunately, didn't really address that.”

“I'm a pro forma Bernie Sanders donor. In years past, when Michael Harrington was still alive, I was a very active member of Democratic Socialists of America.”

“With Barack, there's an emotional need to succeed, to win, to obtain victory. He always believes that he's the smartest person in the room.”

“President Obama's achievements and failures must be evaluated by comparison to those chief executives who have come before him and not be measured against the prophetically moral voice of Martin Luther King Jr.”

“'Dreams from My Father' was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction.”

“It's simply incorrect to call Dr. King a Republican.”

“Dr. King, if he were alive today, probably would simply be a minister, a pastor. His initial intent was, indeed, just to be a preacher. He didn't have any egotistical desire or need to be a public figure or celebrity. He got drafted - or, really, dragged into it - initially in Montgomery.”

“I have very purposely never signed up with commercial lecture agencies as most, I think, prominent historical authors do because, to me, that's a contradiction of who I believe I am given my absorption of the teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“One of the great challenges of being a modern historian is interviewing multiple people who were all there for something, some event. No one's version matches up 100% with other people's, even if it's three or four people on a conference call.”

“I first started reading about Barack and taking notes when he won the Iowa caucuses in January 2008 because I was embarrassed that, at that point, I knew virtually nothing about him.”