Michelle Obama

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

It’s just a matter of managing expectations. So for me, for example, you know, when your husband is President of the United States and you have children, something has got to give. I’ve made compromises in my life and my career, but I’ve also, in exchange, gained a wonderful platform to do some great work.

[on the 2016 election] When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are. That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men… if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to… what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.

I always sort of felt like the eight years that Barack was president, it was sort of like having the good parent at home. You know, the responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time.

Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise.

I love my husband, but my girlfriends are my sanity.

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

The U.S. will not permit constructive programs in its own domains, so it must ensure that they are destroyed elsewhere to terminate ‘the threat of a good example’.

What is called ‘capitalism’ is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states…

I’m not trying to get myself up a notch on the ladder by shoving somebody else down on the ladder, whether it’s a candidate or the president of the United States or anybody else. I just don’t believe that’s the way one oughta campaign, I’ve never done that.

One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

Right before the 2000 [U.S.] elections, about 75 percent regarded it as virtually meaningless, some game involving rich contributors, party managers, and candidates who are trained to project images that conceal issues, but might pick up some votes.

He who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart; he who wants to revive it in its previous form has no head.

We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries, as well. But it will occur at a time when it will be considered possible or necessary by revolutionaries of those countries.

You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things.

In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the issues of foreign policy and defense are fully in the hands of the president.

At the deepest level, the media contribute to the sense that the government is the enemy, and they suppress the sources of real power in the society, which lie in the totalitarian institutions-the corporations, now international in scale -that control the economy and much of our social life.

The point [of the PR industry] is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information-and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

Those who fight corruption should be clean themselves.

I feel as a culture we are ready to look at the truth and address it head on. I think it’s the power of how connected we all are with the digital revolution – there’s no where you can go without seeing the truth. Although it’s upsetting because we can’t believe at this day and age at this time it’s still that blatantly injustice in the world. I think it’s very empowering to do something about it and that’s the reason why I create the We Are Here movement out of my frustration about the apathy in society.