Michelle Obama

My habit is at the beginning of the year, I look at a blank calendar and then we put everything for the kids first like potlucks, sporting events, parent-teacher conferences, doctor’s appointments, and vacations. Second is me. When do I want to work out? When do I want to hang out with my girlfriends? What trips do I want to take? When can I take a long weekend? Put that on there. And then once all that’s done, everything else can come around that. It’s amazing because it forces you to say “no” because you’ve already blocked out the time.

Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes. I mean, he and I and so many believe that if you – what else do you have if you don’t have hope?

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.

[on Donald Trump] I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.

I don’t believe in playing games. It’s not something I would do.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Fueling your body is a process… The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

What I mean is you make the world less ugly just by living in it.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.