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Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Michelle Obama

I grew up with a disabled dad in a too-small house with not much money in a starting-to-fail neighborhood, and I also grew up surrounded by love and music in a diverse city in a country where an education can take you far. I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Failure Grow Up Love Money Music Myself Start
We live by the paradigms we know.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Live One Liner
It felt perverse, how the world just carried on. How everyone was still here, except for my Suzanne.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Carry Exception Myself World
It was painful, but time pushed us all forward.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hard Time Pain Success
I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement Myself Success Worth
Even white people were recognizing him now.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Himself People Recognize Worth
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
We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Friendship Journey Live
I 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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Challenge Comfortable Moments Myself Yourself
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Care Fundamental Problem Thinking Time
What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family God Man Myself
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Believe Direction Ideal Lost Myself Need Ourselves Reality True
His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Book Himself Money
I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn’t wait for Dad. It was his job now to catch up with us.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Believe Home Job Life Man Myself
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 punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hurt Myself Person Understand

Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

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Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

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Popular Authors

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