Did Barack Obama say "Yes we can"?

Q: Did Barack Obama say "Yes we can"?

Yes. Confirmed verbatim in "Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary," delivered at Nashua, New Hampshire on 8 January 2008 and archived by the American Presidency Project — the speech that made the phrase famous. But Obama said the words; he did not coin them. He borrowed the line from Dolores Huerta's 1972 United Farm Workers rallying cry "Sí se puede," a debt he acknowledged from the podium in 2012.

Who really said it

Yes we can

Spoken by Barack Obama b. 1961 · 44th U.S. President; U.S. Senator from Illinois, 2005–2008

Verified In copyright

Confirmed verbatim in “Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary,” delivered at Nashua, New Hampshire on 8 January 2008 and archived by the American Presidency Project — the speech that made the phrase famous. But Obama said the words; he did not coin them. He borrowed the line from Dolores Huerta’s 1972 United Farm Workers rallying cry “Sí se puede,” a debt he acknowledged from the podium in 2012.

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Yes we can” Barack Obama, "Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary," Nashua, New Hampshire, 8 January 2008. Adapted from "¡Sí, se puede!", coined by Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers in 1972. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Barack Obama / Obama for America (2008 campaign)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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, 2009–2017. Theme: "Yes we can". 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 "Yes we can". 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 New Hampshire Primary
Delivered: 8 January 2008 · Nashua, New Hampshire
Occasion: Concession remarks after losing the New Hampshire Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton
Phrase origin: Adapted from “Sí se puede,” coined by Dolores Huerta in 1972

… generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Refrain abridged — full text at the American Presidency Project

What follows in the speech is a long anaphora: Obama attaches the same three words in turn to the founding documents, to slaves and abolitionists, to immigrants and westward pioneers, to organized workers and suffragists, to Kennedy’s moon shot, and to King at the mountaintop — before turning the refrain forward to justice, equality, opportunity and prosperity. The speech is under copyright, so it is described here rather than reproduced in full; the complete text is linked below.

Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary — The American Presidency Project

How three words travelled forty years

1972 — the phrase is born, in Spanish. During César Chávez’s 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona, United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta answers the defeatism around her with “¡Sí, se puede!” The Dolores Huerta Foundation ↗ records that she “used the slogan ‘!Sí, se puede!’ (Yes, we can!)” during that fast.
2004 — it crosses into English, and Obama thinks it’s corny. David Axelrod closes Obama’s first 30-second Illinois Senate ad with “Yes we can.” Obama asks, “Gee, is that too corny?” ↗ Michelle Obama, visiting the shoot, shakes her head: “Not corny.” The line stays.
8 January 2008 — the speech. Having just lost New Hampshire, Obama turns the phrase into a nine-fold refrain. The American Presidency Project ↗ preserves the text; Wikiquote lists it among his sourced quotations.
29 May 2012 — the debt, admitted. Awarding Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Obama tells the room: “Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan.” ↗

In copyright

The speech was delivered on 8 January 2008 and is in copyright. It is not a work of the U.S. Government — that exemption covers works produced by federal employees in the course of official duties, and this was a campaign speech by a sitting senator running for office, so it does not qualify. Separately, the Spanish original carries its own layer: “Sí se puede” is a federally registered trademark of the United Farm Workers ↗, which successfully defended it when AeroMéxico sought to register the phrase. Short quotation for identification and commentary, as here, is a different matter from reproducing the speech.

Fact-check

He said it. He didn’t invent it.

This is the rare celebrity quote that survives scrutiny on attribution and fails it on origin. Obama demonstrably spoke these words, and the speech is archived. What the internet gets wrong is the assumption that a phrase this fused to one man must have started with him. It started with a woman, in Spanish, thirty-six years earlier, in a fight over farmworkers’ right to strike.

Barack Obama Said it — didn’t coin it

The phrase is routinely presented as Obama’s invention. It is a translation. Obama has never claimed otherwise — in fact he volunteered the correction himself at the 2012 Medal of Freedom ceremony, telling the audience he had “stolen her slogan, ‘Si, se puede.’” ↗

César Chávez Common mix-up

Chávez is the famous name of the farmworker movement, so the phrase often gets pinned on him — the same magnet effect that put it on Obama. But he was the one fasting; Huerta was the one talking. The Dolores Huerta Foundation ↗ and the National Archives ↗ both credit Huerta with creating it during Chávez’s 25-day fast.

The 2008 presidential campaign Four years early

The 2008 New Hampshire speech is where the phrase became mythology, but it was already Obama’s tagline: he adopted the English version during the 2004 Illinois Senate run ↗, where Axelrod wrote it as the closing line of his first television ad.

“Yes we can” vs. “Yes, we can” Punctuation drift

The archived transcript renders it with a comma — Yes, we can — while the campaign’s own branding, and the will.i.am music video released 2 February 2008 ↗, dropped it. A trivial difference, but it is why the phrase appears in two forms everywhere.

The verdict is split cleanly: the attribution is right, the origin story is wrong. Obama said “Yes, we can” in Nashua on 8 January 2008 — that is on the record ↗. Dolores Huerta said it first, in Spanish, in Phoenix in 1972. The man who made it famous is also the best witness against the myth that he made it up.

Context

Why it mattered

The strangest thing about the most famous victory slogan of the century is that Obama first roared it in defeat. He had been favoured to win New Hampshire. He lost it to Hillary Clinton on 8 January 2008, walked out to a deflated room in Nashua, and instead of conceding quietly, spent the back half of the speech hanging three borrowed words on every American movement he could name — abolitionists, immigrants, suffragists, organised labour, King at the mountaintop.

It worked because the phrase already had forty years of mileage on it. When Dolores Huerta improvised “¡Sí, se puede!” in Phoenix in 1972, it was not an applause line; it was an argument with people who had given up. Arizona had just moved to strip farmworkers of the right to strike, Chávez was twenty-five days into a fast, and the mood in the room was that what had worked in California could not work here. Huerta’s answer was: yes it can. The phrase was built for losing rooms. Obama simply found one.

“Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan.” — Barack Obama, 29 May 2012

Read the full story

It nearly didn’t survive its first day. Axelrod wrote “Yes we can” as the last line of Obama’s first 30-second Senate ad in 2004. Obama, mid-shoot, asked whether it was “too corny.” Michelle Obama happened to be visiting the set; asked for a verdict, she shook her head and said “Not corny.” Axelrod’s memoir credits her with saving the line.

The irony nobody scripted. Huerta, whose phrase became the engine of Obama’s 2008 campaign, endorsed Hillary Clinton in that same primary contest — the opponent who beat Obama in New Hampshire on the very night he turned her words into an anthem.

The campaign didn’t make the video. The will.i.am “Yes We Can” music video, which did as much as the speech itself to lodge the phrase in public memory, was made by supporters with no involvement from the Obama campaign. Its lyrics are nothing but the Nashua speech, sung.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Hope Leadership

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary (8 Jan 2008)presidency.ucsb.edu

The American Presidency Project's archived transcript — the primary source. Contains the full "Yes, we can" refrain verbatim.

Barack Obama — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote lists the line in its Sourced section, cited to New Hampshire Primary Night, 8 January 2008. No dispute or misattribution flag.

Remarks at the Presidential Medal of Freedom Ceremony (29 May 2012)obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

Obama's own on-the-record admission that he took the slogan from Dolores Huerta.

Dolores Huerta Foundation — FAQdoloreshuerta.org

Huerta's own foundation on the 1972 coinage during Chávez's 25-day Phoenix fast, and Obama's thanks for the loan.

Dolores Huerta: "Sí, se puede!"prologue.blogs.archives.gov

The U.S. National Archives on Huerta creating the phrase amid Arizona's 1972 anti-union legislation.

Sí se puedeen.wikipedia.org

Overview of the phrase: Huerta's 1972 coinage, Obama's 2004 adoption of the English version, and the UFW's federal trademark.

The man who made it famous

About the speaker

Barack Obama

b. 1961 · 44th President of the United States, 2009–2017

Barack Obama was a community organiser in Chicago, a constitutional law lecturer, an Illinois state senator and a first-term U.S. senator before winning the presidency in 2008. His organising years on the South Side put him in the same tradition that produced the phrase he made famous — which may be why he reached for a farmworkers’ union chant rather than inventing something of his own. He has consistently credited Dolores Huerta as its author, most publicly when he hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around her neck in 2012 and called himself a thief.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Obama, Barack. "Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary." Nashua, New Hampshire, 8 January 2008. The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-following-the-new-hampshire-primary-2. On the phrase's origin, see Dolores Huerta Foundation, "FAQ," and Barack Obama, "Remarks by the President at Presidential Medal of Freedom Ceremony," 29 May 2012.

MLA (9th ed.)

Obama, Barack. "Remarks Following the New Hampshire Primary." 8 Jan. 2008, Nashua, New Hampshire. The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-following-the-new-hampshire-primary-2.

APA (7th ed.)

Obama, B. (2008, January 8). Remarks following the New Hampshire primary [Speech transcript]. The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-following-the-new-hampshire-primary-2

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Yes we can’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/yes-we-can