Michelle Obama

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

I advise young women: Negotiate hard and know your worth.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

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 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.

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

What right have you, save service to the world, to think that other men’s labor should contribute to your gains?

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]

A nation that knows how to work will never suffer.

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life’s problems.

[on Steve jobs] Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, ‘Is this a good deal?’ I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

I must have had a dozen jobs and I got fired from all of them.

It is always the start that requires the greatest effort.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

See what a 25-cent raise will do to us, said Mr. Ford. So they figured the daily and monthly cost of a 25-cent increase. Put on another quarter and see what that will cost, he said. And so they went on, 25 cents a step. Finally the wage of $2.34 stood at $4.75–more than 100 percent increase. One of the associates–a good financial head–remarked rather sarcastically that if they were going to be fools, why not be first-class fools and make it $5. All right, said Mr. Ford, let’s make it $5.