Michelle Obama

I’ve been at so many tables with so many folks who are imposters. But shame on us if we sit by and let an imposter talk us down.

[on the 2016 election] When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are. That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men… if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to… what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.

Fear is a useless emotion. Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility.

The times when Barack and I are at our most relaxed are when we invite some friends over who we have known forever. And you put a little music on top of that? Some good food? It renews your spirit to get back in the game.

If we want our daughters to dream bigger than we did we still have work to do.

You know, it’s the silliness in me. It has always been there. I love to make people laugh. It comes from my family. My family is funny.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

You affect your subconscious mind by verbal repetition.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.