Michelle Obama

I have to plan my happiness. That’s the thing, we think happiness just happens and it can, but you’ve got to work in some happiness too.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys. Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house. And a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. He was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger-side door.

My habit is at the beginning of the year, I look at a blank calendar and then we put everything for the kids first like potlucks, sporting events, parent-teacher conferences, doctor’s appointments, and vacations. Second is me. When do I want to work out? When do I want to hang out with my girlfriends? What trips do I want to take? When can I take a long weekend? Put that on there. And then once all that’s done, everything else can come around that. It’s amazing because it forces you to say “no” because you’ve already blocked out the time.

I am sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics. It’s exhausting, and frankly, it’s depressing.

Fear is a useless emotion. Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.

If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

As soon as the legitimate Lebanese government is convinced that the conditions have ripened and that Lebanon is able to maintain stability on its own… Then, the Syrian forces will return to their homeland.

You need to put drones under control; you need to lay out certain rules of engagement in order to prevent or minimize collateral casualties. It is extremely important.

It’s a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

Touring a segregated America – forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you don’t realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Donald Trump and I have, firstly, met more than once at various international venues and secondly, we regularly talk over the phone.

Sometimes it’s difficult to accept, to recognise one’s own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic.

[on Osama bin Laden’s death] no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him and put him on trial, to go through that process.

Europe has not been a heterogenous society to anything like the extent that the United States has. Nor has it been as mobile a society as the United States. These matters have been a bit under the cover, but they’re harder to keep under the cover.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of Soviets and factory committees.

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.