Michelle Obama

I’m a product of pop culture.

We’re so afraid of each other… Colour, wealth, these things that don’t really matter still play too much of a role in how we see one another. And it’s sad, because the thing that least defines us is the colour of our skin.

You don’t want to be with a boy who is too stupid to appreciate a smart young lady. There is no boy who is cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting your education.

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

I am sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics. It’s exhausting, and frankly, it’s depressing.

I will always be engaged in some way in public service and public life. The minute I left my corporate-law firm to work for the city, I never looked back. I’ve always felt very alive using my gifts and talents to help other people. I sleep better at night. I’m happier.

I feel that [Trump] cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

If a strong government finds that it can, with impunity, destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.

I’ve never had the passion for politics.

The only way a kid is going to practise is if it’s total fun for him… and it was for me.

Latin America has, to a significant extent, liberated itself from foreign-meaning mostly U.S.-domination in the past 10 or 15 years. That’s a dramatic development in world affairs. It’s the first time in 500 years. It’s a big change.

Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Bike is the most democratic transport vehicle. Bike is the most daring, challenging as it gives its owner the tempting feeling of freedom, that is why one can say without any exaggeration, bike is a symbol of freedom.

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought – by force of circumstances, not argument – to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are.

China has created very good investment tools, including an entire network of very large funds. The Russian Private Investment Fund works with some of those funds, with China’s largest investment funds.

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.