Michelle Obama

So early in our lives we are shushed. And not just directly shushed but sometimes in our lives we’re treated too preciously. We may have a father that loves us and treats us like a doll. They don’t treat us like real beings and equal partners.

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

Every day, you have the power to choose our better history – by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right.

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

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

It’s just a matter of managing expectations. So for me, for example, you know, when your husband is President of the United States and you have children, something has got to give. I’ve made compromises in my life and my career, but I’ve also, in exchange, gained a wonderful platform to do some great work.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

Already know you that which you need.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.