Michelle Obama

I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is. The same thing is true in the work that I do. It’s all about me feeling where people are. So that’s why I try to be really present, even when I’m on a rope line. I never take for granted my interactions with people. And it’s never black-and-white. I’m usually reading the crowd, reading the people that I’m with. I guess if this role has changed me, it’s improved my ability to do that. I’ve gotten better at sensing where people are at any given time.

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

Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well-informed.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

I wish that girls could fail as bad as men do and be okay.

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.

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.

… because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.

By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we risk deterring our best and brightest from pursuing higher education and securing a good paying job.

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

To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try.

My last year in high school, I worked at a bindery, side by side with grown-ups who had been there their entire lives. Knowing that I, as a 16-year-old, was getting the same income and doing the same work… it gave me respect for those workers. But it also gave me an understanding that more is needed for folks to be able to cobble together a decent life on minimum wage.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the highest return.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

No task before our nation is more important than expanding and improving the educational opportunities of all our people. The concept that every American deserves the opportunity to attain the highest level of education of which he is capable is not new to this Administration – it is a traditional ideal of democracy. But it is time that we moved toward the fulfillment of this ideal with more vigor and less delay. For education is both the foundation and the unifying force of our democratic way of life – it is the mainspring of our economic and social progress – it is the highest expression of achievement in our society, ennobling and enriching human life. In short, it is at the same time the most profitable investment society can make and the richest reward it can offer.

Sometimes you get educated by being really bothered by things and you have to educate yourself on how to respond.

Poorer students take out larger loans and will have to contribute more to the cost of higher education.

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

Women who earn a certificate or degree from a community college, especially in STEM-related field, will be ready to move into a good-paying job in the growing global economy. Community colleges also offer mentorship and support that goes far beyond the classroom.

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

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.