Michelle Obama

When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?

I learned in those eight years is that home is where you make it, and we were in the White House for eight years, but it wasn’t the house. It was us in it. It was our value and our love for each other.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

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.

Happiness, wealth, and success are the byproducts of goal setting; they cannot be the goals themselves.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.

A happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people don’t allow the happy moment, because they’re so busy trying to get a happy life.

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

If you want to be happy, be.

When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us–there is no life.

Happy is harder than money. Anyone who thinks money will make them happy, doesn’t have money.

Don’t worry, be happy!

Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.