Michelle Obama

You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms… you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

I could have spent eight years doing anything, and at some level, it would have been fine. I could have focused on flowers. I could have focused on decor. I could have focused on entertainment. Because any First Lady, rightfully, gets to define her role. There’s no legislative authority; you’re not elected. And that’s a wonderful gift of freedom.

Choose people who lift you up.

I always touch people, because I know that there’s a level of anxiety, people are teary or they’re nervous, and I just try to physically hold them and bring them down and say: ‘We’re here. I’m just Michelle.’

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.

[on her mother] she’s a very smart, independent woman who was kind of coming into her own in the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s

What sometimes is missing for young girls is that so early in our lives we’re shushed. And not just directly shushed. Sometimes we’re treated a little too preciously. They treat us like a doll. They don’t treat us like real beings, equal partners. I was loved early by my father, but I was never so precious that he didn’t think I could be there at the table.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.

If you’re someone who genuinely believes that women don’t deserve or aren’t as much as men, you’re like the plague. On the big history chart, you’re the plague … it’s just pointless and deadly.

I view myself as being the average woman.

I have a little sister and I’m constantly annoyed [by] how terribly written most females are in most everything – and especially in comedy. Their anatomy seems to be the only defining aspect of their character, and I just find that untruthful and it straight up offends me.

To all my goddesses in the world spreading love and light, power and radiance. Never stop being brilliant!!

The difference between a broken community and a thriving one is the presence of women who are valued.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

If you look up feminist in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights …

You can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your ‘religious freedom’. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean that you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

We are a gorgeous, infinite circle of women all shades, all styles, in all the ways we were made. Inside of us everything blooms.

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

It’s pretty clear that if men were having babies we’d have different policies.