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Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.

Michelle Obama

Focus on what you can control. Be a good person every day. Vote. Read. Treat one another kindly. Follow the law. Don’t tweet nasty stuff.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Control Focus Law Reading Yourself
You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Goodness Success Yourself
It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Challenge Change Easy Feeling Justice
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

Friendship Goodness Hurt Life Marriage People Relationship Right Trust
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
I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Beginning Beyond Hope Myself Place Understand
failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Result
Even white people were recognizing him now.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Himself People Recognize Worth
there’s no straight line between effort and reward.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Effort Limitation Reward
At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hope Improvement Mindset Myself
Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Goodness Promise Woman Empowerment Worth Yourself
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Children Feeling Investment Worth
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
My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family Heart Mom Myself World
Life was teaching me that progress and change happen slowly. Not in two years, four years, or even a lifetime. We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Life Myself Patience Teaching
Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Kind Oppression Power Ugly
When they go low, we go high.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Inspirational One Liner Success
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 ?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Black Life Oppression Power Woman
Look how I’m managing, I wanted to say in those moments, to my audience of no one. Does everyone see that I’m pulling this off?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Moments Myself See
I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement Myself Success Worth
Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – 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

Children Deep Grow Up Myself Philosophy Thinking
You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Decision Fear Possible Yourself
And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Human Myself Willing
You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Attachment Experience Ocean Place Yourself
America, our moment is now, Barack said. Our moment is now.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Moment Ourselves Present
If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Quick Yourself
They didn’t own a house. We were their investment, me and Craig. Everything went into us.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Home Investment

Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.

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Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.

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Popular Authors

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