Michelle Obama

No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful.

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.

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

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.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

I love my husband, but my girlfriends are my sanity.

You’’re a feminist if you go to a Jay-Z and Beyoncé concert, and you’’re NOT like, ‘mmm, I feel like Beyoncé should be making 23 percent less money than Jay-Z.’

We have become the men we wanted to marry.

I will be phenomenal to the women. I mean, I want to help women.

Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.

I am a woman with thoughts and questions and sh*t to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story – I will.

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

A strong woman looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink.

We can never be complacent and think that we’ve arrived now as women. Because I hear this from young women. Some of you young women who aren’t feeling the pains that many of our predecessors have felt – you think, well, there aren’t any problems, women’s rights, we’ve got this all figured out, I’m already equal, I’m good – I’m just like, oh, just you wait, you’ll feel it. So the work continues.

I love to challenge the status quo. That’s been my mission from day one as an actress and an early feminist wanting equality and wanting to push the limits of what’s possible.

I feel there are certain people who are systematically ripping (feminism) down because of their lack of regard and their ignorance about what the women before us had to go through.

What gets me is how many women – young women – give up their power and their sense of self. Thinking they’re going to get more out of life if they take off their clothes and objectify themselves, instead of functioning on the principle that they’re smart and capable, that you can be an actress and not be on the covers of T&A magazines. I’m flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do that. It blows my mind.

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

As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire.

I think it’s a wonderful time for a woman.

Women feel more guilt than men, not because of some weird chromosomal issue but because they have a history of being blamed for other people’s behavior. You get hit, you must have annoyed someone; you get raped, you must have excited someone; your kid is a junkie, you must have brought them up wrong.