Michelle Obama

Be passionate about something and lean to that strength.

What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first.

We get the leaders we vote for. We get the policies we vote for. And when we don’t vote, that’s when we wind up with government of, by and for other people.

I’m a product of pop culture.

This generation, because of social media and the internet, kids are more exposed to more people and more cultures. I think that they are more open in ways. They are less tolerant of obvious inequities. This generation will look at what is happening now in the world and say, ‘This doesn’t feel right because this wasn’t what I was taught.’

When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.

Not only is it a part of my life, I need to bring awareness to the severity of Lyme disease.

And every person can benefit from talking to somebody. I’m the most anti-medication person, but some people need medicine, and there was a time where I needed some too.

Depression is melancholy minus its charms.

Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.

A lot of people undermine their own anxiety because they’re like…nothing’s necessarily going wrong. It just happens and it’s just inside of you and that’s not something you should be ashamed of. It’s justified because it’s happening.

If today I can practice a sport, and move around 90% of the time without a cane, it’s because of the love and support of my producers, record labels and above all my audience who have always believed in me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made much more progress than I did in the hospital.

I feel like there’s this glamour… where the woman who has a psychological illness is in fur, laid out on a chaise. Whereas in reality, a woman with mental illness or… is struggling with her psychological wellbeing is often in sweats and in a T-shirt that used to belong to her dad and is covered in food bits.

You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

My advice would be to talk to people about [your anxiety]. Don’t feel alone in it. Treat your body as if you are another person that you need to take care of and heal.

[on depression] This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am on of them. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.

In the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin ever. But for some reasons, when someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they’re immediately crazy or something. And I don’t know, it’s a very interesting double standard that I often don’t have the ability to talk about but I certainly feel no shame about.

We can’t let people down when they can’t get any medical care, when they’re sick and don’t have money to go to a doctor. You help them.

It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn’t even think. That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.

Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not an either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.