Michelle Obama

What truly made me fall in love with Barack Obama was his character.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys. Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house. And a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. He was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger-side door.

It’s powerful to have strong men but what does that strength mean?

When they go low, we go high.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.