Michelle Obama

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.

If we want our daughters to dream bigger than we did we still have work to do.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

If we want maturity, we have to be mature. If we want a nation that feels hopeful, then we have to speak in hopeful terms… We have to model what we want.

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Private men, in fine, are so much their own, that, paying common dues, they are sovereigns of all the rest. Yet the public must and will be served; and they that do it well, deserve public marks of honour and respect. To do so, men must have public minds, as well as salaries; or they will serve private ends at the public cost. Government can never be well administered, but where those intrusted make conscience of well discharging their places.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one’s destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.

I thus free myself from the illness of ego-clinging.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Business is the salt of life.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.