Michelle Obama

If we want maturity, we have to be mature. If we want a nation that feels hopeful, then we have to speak in hopeful terms… We have to model what we want.

Men don’t even ask that question, ‘What if it doesn’t happen?’ That’s what we do. That is a behavior of our gender. Speak up in all that tables we’re in.

How hard you work matters more than how much you make.

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.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

Find people who will make you better.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

No matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.