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 OBAMAI look back on the discomfort of that moment now and recognize the more universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go.
More Michelle Obama Quotes
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We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.
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His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
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Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit.
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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 -
Everything was not lost. This was the message we needed to carry forward. It’s what I truly believed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was our reality—the world as it is. We needed now to be resolute, to keep our feet pointed in the direction of progress.
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It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.
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The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired.
MICHELLE OBAMA -
The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.
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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.
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Am I good enough? Yes, I am.
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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 -
We explain when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you do not stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, you go high.
MICHELLE OBAMA -
In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.
MICHELLE OBAMA -
Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
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I like the idea of being rigorous about friendship.
MICHELLE OBAMA