Michelle Obama

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents, are their most important role models.

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

[on Donald Trump] I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

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.

Just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who think diffenrently…

Be better. Be better at everything. Be better fathers… Men can be better husbands, which is – be a part of your family’s life. Do the dishes. Don’t babysit your children. You don’t babysit your own children. Be engaged. Don’t just think going to work and coming home makes you a man. Being a father, being engaged, all that stuff is important. Be a better employer. When you are sitting at a seat of power at a table of any kind and you look around you just see you, it’s just you and a bunch of men around a table, on a golf course, making deals, and you allow that to happen, and you’re okay with that – be better.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents, are their most important role models.

To tell the truth I cannot call my childhood bad. In your childhood you can’t compare things: one eats carrots, one eats candy, both taste good. As a child you cannot tell the difference.

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work.

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

[Postpartum depression] is something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

Everything depends on upbringing.

Once you’re grown up you can’t come back.