people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy." - Meaning and context.">

ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. And people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.

— Barack Obama

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. And people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy." in the context of "Statement by the President (20 August 2014)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Barack Obama" (Quotes, 2014) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Barack Obama

About Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States of America from 2009 to 2017. Born in Hawaii, the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, he won the 2008 presidential election and was re-elected president in November 2012. A member of the U.S. Democratic Party, he was the first African American president. Before becoming president, he represented the 13th district for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 and served as United States senator from Illinois between January 4, 2005 and November 16, 2008. While president, he was the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.