In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.
MICHELLE OBAMAThere’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others.
More Michelle Obama Quotes
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Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
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Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change
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We live by the paradigms we know.
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America, our moment is now, Barack said. Our moment is now.
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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.
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Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.
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I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close.
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I was determined to be someone who told the truth, using my voice to lift up the voiceless when I could, and to not disappear on people in need. I understood that when I showed up somewhere,
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Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work.
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The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person.
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It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.
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My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.
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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?
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I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.
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I wanted Americans to understand that words matter—that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it.
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Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an angry black woman. I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it angry or black or woman ?
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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.
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Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.
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When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes.
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They didn’t own a house. We were their investment, me and Craig. Everything went into us.
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The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.
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This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time.
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Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.
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The burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.
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When they go low, we go high.
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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.
MICHELLE OBAMA