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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

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

Myself Need Perfection Road Wrong
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
The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. What’s better for us? Barack called to the people gathered in the room. Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Choice People World Yourself
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
You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Decision Fear Possible Yourself
We live by the paradigms we know.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Live One Liner
The easiest way to disregard a woman’s voice is to package her as a scold.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Easy Herself Oppression Voice Woman
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Carry Deserve Existence History Remember Tolerance
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
It was painful, but time pushed us all forward.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hard Time Pain Success
The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Black Man Oppression Reality
I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement Myself Success Worth
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
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
The burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Student
I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Husband Myself Photograph Smile

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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