Mr Obama compared the youthful Egyptian protest movement to the Germans who tore down the Berlin Wall, Gandhi leading India to independence, and the Indonesian popular protest movement that had succeeded in forcing President Suharto to resign.
"Egyptians have inspired us, and they've done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence," he said.
"For in Egypt, it was the moral force of non-violence - not terrorism, not mindless killing - but non-violence, moral force, that bent the arc of history toward justice once more."