Michelle Obama

I have to plan my happiness. That’s the thing, we think happiness just happens and it can, but you’ve got to work in some happiness too.

I always said to myself, this would be really hard if I were 20 or 30. That’s why I look at these young celebrities, and I just feel for them, because you have to be grown up enough to know yourself in this. And that just takes time.

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.

Success isn’t about how your life looks to others. It’s about how it feels to you. We realized that being successful isn’t about being impressive, it’s about being inspired. That’s what it means to be true to yourself.

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.

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

When I’ve talked about the idea of being President, I’m not saying I have any political views, I don’t have views on politics, I just have a view on humanity. On people. On the truth.

We – we need strength, we need energy, we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.

I think that the centralisation of access to information through the few major corporations that by now virtually monopolise information transmission, like Facebook, Google, Amazon, is extremely dangerous.

Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

I want every individual who has the potential and qualifications to succeed in higher education to be given the opportunity to participate, whatever their family background.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

While mild social reforms have been introduced in the United States, others now conventional in Western Europe (e.g., national health insurance, minimal ‘worker participation’ in industry, etc.) have been effectively resisted here…

The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us from taking extreme steps on the international arena that are highly dangerous for modern civilization.

Japan fended off the European invasions almost entirely. That’s why Japan is the one area of the Third World that developed. That’s striking. The one part of the Third World that wasn’t colonized is the one part that’s part of the industrialized world. That’s not by accident.

The U.S.S. George H. W. Bush is a great thing in my life. It’s amazing. A great honor.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school’s team wins the football game? I don’t know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me… why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports.