Michelle Obama

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way!

I learned in those eight years is that home is where you make it, and we were in the White House for eight years, but it wasn’t the house. It was us in it. It was our value and our love for each other.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

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.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.