Michelle Obama

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts … good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

On Oct. 3, 1992, Barack and I were married in Chicago – and every day since, I’ve grown prouder and more in love with him.

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

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

You know, it’s the silliness in me. It has always been there. I love to make people laugh. It comes from my family. My family is funny.

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.

“From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.

We won’t unlock opportunities for young women and girls unless we can change the mindset of every family and community. To achieve this, it cannot just be women who speak up for girls.

The argument that ‘boys will be boys’ actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behaviors from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect.

I wish that girls could fail as bad as men do and be okay.

If we don’t teach our young girls to speak at an early age, that doesn’t just happen.

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’m usually good about my temper, but all these men trying to control women’s bodies are really beginning to piss me off.

I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.

I just love bossy women. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It mans somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I always knew the woman I wanted to be.

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

The abuse of women and girls is the most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth.

Our first job in life as women, I think, is to get to know ourselves. And I think a lot of times we don’t do that. We spend our time pleasing, satisfying, looking out into the world to define who we are – listening to the messages, the images, the limited definitions that people have of who we are.

As I grow and I get older I’m realising more and more that there’s such a beautiful, sensual power that we have as women.