black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

Michelle Obama

What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.
MICHELLE OBAMA

End Grow Up Yourself
I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Husband Myself Photograph Smile
Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Alone Carry Deserve History See Tolerance
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Children Feeling Investment Worth
The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. What’s better for us? Barack called to the people gathered in the room. Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Choice People World Yourself
It’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many angry black women have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Angry Black Emotional Logic Woman
It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Death Hurt Live Myself
Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Collection Imperfection Memories Mindset
Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Kind Oppression Power Ugly
You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Choice Forever Yourself
But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting—a suggestion of failure long before I’d even tried to succeed.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Myself Plant Result Success
The burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Student
Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Doubt Failure Fear Feeling Result Vulnerable
Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses, swapped back and forth and over again.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Friendship Kindness Woman
It was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once—to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Direction Live Plant Possible Success
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Care Education Health Pieces Truth

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Michelle Obama Quotes