Obama really did say both sentences, back to back, in Chicago on the night of the Super Tuesday primaries — 5 February 2008. The transcript at The American Presidency Project ↗ has it verbatim. What he did not do is coin the first sentence: that line closes June Jordan’s “Poem for South African Women,” presented at the United Nations on 9 August 1978. The second sentence, “We are the change that we seek,” is Obama’s own.
“We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek” Barack Obama, remarks on the night of the Super Tuesday primaries, Chicago, 5 February 2008. Obama said it, but did not coin it: the first sentence closes June Jordan's "Poem for South African Women," presented at the United Nations, 9 August 1978. Via quotle.info
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Barack Obama — 44th President of the United States · U.S. Senator, 2005–2008. Theme: "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The documented source
Speech
Remarks Following the “Super Tuesday” Primaries and Caucuses
Delivered
5 February 2008 — Chicago, Illinois
Borrowed line
June Jordan, “Poem for South African Women,” presented at the United Nations, 9 August 1978
Transcript
The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara)
You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek.Super Tuesday night, Chicago
9 August 1978 — June Jordan presents “Poem for South African Women” at the United Nations, commemorating the 40,000 women and children who marched against the “dompass” in 1956. The poem closes with a single italicized line set apart as its own stanza: we are the ones we have been waiting for. Academy of American Poets ↗
June 2000 — a text signed “Hopi Elders’ Prophecy, June 8, 2000” begins circulating online, ending with the same sentence. It postdates Jordan’s poem by twenty-two years. Awakin ↗
2006 — Alice Walker titles her essay collection with the phrase (New Press) and credits its author plainly: “It was the poet June Jordan who wrote ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’ Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song.” Excerpt ↗
5 February 2008 — Obama, campaigning in Chicago on Super Tuesday night, says both sentences: Jordan’s line, then his own. The American Presidency Project ↗
Both halves of this quote are recent enough to remain under copyright. The speech was delivered in 2008, far too late for public domain, and campaign remarks by a candidate are not a work of the federal government. The borrowed first sentence is more encumbered still: June Jordan’s poem appeared in Passion (1980) and is collected in Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), with rights held by the June Jordan Literary Estate ↗.
Fact-check
Who gets the credit — and who earned it
This is an unusual case. Obama genuinely said the words, on the record, in a speech anyone can read. The misattribution isn’t about whether he spoke the line — it’s about who wrote it, and the answer is a poet most people crediting Obama have never heard of.
✕
First sentenceBarack Obama, as author Popularizer, not originator
Obama said it; he did not coin it. As civic-studies scholar Peter Levine puts it in his survey of the phrase’s origins, “Barack Obama didn’t coin it and never said he did.” The line closes June Jordan’s poem, written thirty years earlier. Peter Levine ↗
✕
First sentence“Hopi Elders” No evidence
A widely shared inspirational text ending in this sentence circulates under the signature “Hopi Elders’ Prophecy, June 8, 2000” — as reproduced here ↗. That date is twenty-two years after Jordan’s poem. Levine, reviewing the claim, writes: “Some websites call it a Hopi elders’ phrase, but I see no evidence that the Hopis were using it long ago.” Peter Levine ↗
✕
First sentenceAlice Walker She declines the credit
Walker’s 2006 bestseller took the phrase as its title, which led many to assume it was hers. Walker herself says otherwise, in the book: “It was the poet June Jordan who wrote ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’” Book excerpt ↗
✕
Wording“We are the change we have been waiting for” Compressed variant
A shorter version circulates that fuses Obama’s two sentences into one. The transcript shows he kept them separate — Jordan’s line first, then his own. The American Presidency Project ↗
✓Obama said both sentences in Chicago on 5 February 2008, exactly as quoted — but the famous half belongs to June Jordan, who closed her “Poem for South African Women” with it at the United Nations on 9 August 1978. Read the poem ↗
Context
Why it mattered
June Jordan wrote the line for the 40,000 women and children who marched on Pretoria in August 1956 against the pass laws — people with no cavalry coming, who worked out that the only ones who would free them were themselves. She set the sentence apart at the end of the poem, italicized, as its own stanza. Peter Levine notes it reads “as if it were an epigraph,” which raises the possibility that even Jordan was quoting something older from the freedom-movement tradition; no earlier written source has been produced.
By 2008 the sentence had travelled through Sweet Honey in the Rock’s music, through the late organizer Lisa Sullivan — whom both John Edwards and Jim Wallis credited as their source for it — and through Alice Walker’s bestselling book title. When Obama reached for it on Super Tuesday night, he was picking up a line already worn smooth by thirty years of movement use, and adding a sentence of his own to close the thought.
“Barack Obama didn’t coin it and never said he did.” — Peter Levine
A note on how far back the line really goes
The honest answer is that June Jordan’s 1978 poem is the earliest documented appearance anyone has produced, and that is where the trail currently ends. Levine flags two loose threads: the epigraph-style typesetting, and the fact that activists in the Edwards and Wallis orbit traced the phrase not to Jordan but to organizer Lisa Sullivan (1961–2011). Either Sullivan was quoting Jordan, or both drew on something older from civil rights–era organizing that was never written down.
What is not in doubt: nothing places this sentence in Hopi tradition, and nothing places its authorship with Obama. The widely circulated “Hopi Elders’ Prophecy” version carries a June 2000 date — well after Jordan’s poem was published and set to music.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 1961 · 44th President of the United States · U.S. Senator, 2005–2008
Barack Obama was a first-term U.S. senator from Illinois when he delivered these lines on Super Tuesday night in 2008; he would win the presidency nine months later and serve two terms. His campaign rhetoric leaned heavily on the borrowed and the remixed — lines drawn from scripture, from the civil rights movement, from American poetry — and this sentence is a textbook case. He never claimed to have invented it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Barack Obama, “Remarks Following the ‘Super Tuesday’ Primaries and Caucuses,” Chicago, IL, February 5, 2008, in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. The first sentence originates with June Jordan, “Poem for South African Women,” presented at the United Nations, August 9, 1978; collected in Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005).
MLA (9th ed.)
Jordan, June. "Poem for South African Women." 1978. Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan, Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
APA (7th ed.)
Jordan, J. (2005). Poem for South African women. In Directed by desire: The complete poems of June Jordan. Copper Canyon Press. (Original work presented 1978)
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-are-the-ones-weve-been-waiting-for-we-are-the-change