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.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

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

A lot of power and bravery is practice. And some of that is taking the risk to try and be at the table. And then when you’re at the table, taking that first risk to open your mouth and risk being rejected.

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

Men don’t even ask that question, ‘What if it doesn’t happen?’ That’s what we do. That is a behavior of our gender. Speak up in all that tables we’re in.

The most crucial use of knowledge and education is to understand the importance of developing a good heart.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

It is only the ignorant who despise education.

School reports were always pretty bad. I never ever did my homework. I always turned up for lessons as I liked my teachers but my report said I didn’t try very hard.

My first task is to help students reject 18 years of poor learning that teaches them that knowledge is a product rather than a process.

Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasure, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime that ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.

The biggest little thing for entrepreneurs is the lifelong commitment to education.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Any man can learn anything he will, but no man can teach except to those who want to learn. Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.

A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.

A man’s college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise.

The function of this school is custodial. It’s here to keep these kids off the streets until the girls are big enough to get pregnant and the boys are old enough to go out and hold up a gas station.