“I’m a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.”

I’m worried about parents who aren’t parenting.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That’s hard. But it’s the only way.

I’m a little old-fashioned.

Whatever the era…one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children, they must come first.

The winner of the hoop race will be the first to realize her dream, not society’s dream, her own personal dream.

Whether you are talking about education, career, or service, you are talking about life. And life must really have joy. It’s supposed to be fun.

You try to do something every single day that will help an American or maybe someone overseas.

Libraries have always seemed like the richest places in the world to me, and I?ve done some of my best learning and thinking thanks to them. Libraries and librarians have definitely changed my life ? and the lives of countless other Americans.

Future of his nation does not depend on what happens at the White House, but what happens at your house

I don’t think that’s healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else’s.

You can’t tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die.

If you are the wife of a governor or the wife of a vice president, I think you can be prepared for it.

I hate the fact that people think compromise is a dirty word.

I’m not a competitive person, and I think women like me because they don’t think I’m competitive, just nice.

The darn trouble with cleaning the house is it gets dirty the next day anyway, so skip a week if you have to. The children are the most important thing.

This is where we can discuss the evidence [of the chemical weapons ], but he doesn’t have it. He didn’t present it because he doesn’t have it, Kerry doesn’t have it. No one in your administration has it. If they had it, they would have presented it to you as media from the first day.

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

Shoot first and never miss.

By definition a sequel can’t be original. So you’ve got to figure out what worked the first time around.

But here too it should be noted that the President’s approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.

The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.

There are bad types and good types, and the whole science and art of typography begins after the first category has been set aside.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.