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And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.

Michelle Obama

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Energy Goal Grow Up Investment Lesson Negative Oneself True
If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Quick Yourself
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
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Children Feeling Investment Worth
I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Beginning Beyond Hope Myself Place Thinking Understand Yourself
Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Alone Carry Deserve History See Tolerance
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
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
I hate diversity workshops. Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Comfortable Hate Honesty Myself
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
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
[Y]ou may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Creation Live World Yourself
My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family Heart Mom Myself World
Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Kind Oppression Power Ugly
I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Learning Myself Value Voice
a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately—even alone.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Alone Happiness Marriage Private Quiet
The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Fame Hate Success
For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement End Growth Journey Myself See
His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Book Himself Money
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Act Explanation Inspirational
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
Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Feeling Goodness Hurt Relationship Right
It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Death Hurt Live Myself
The easiest way to disregard a woman’s voice is to package her as a scold.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Easy Herself Oppression Voice Woman
For me, marriage was more like a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family Goal Live Marriage Myself

And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.

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And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.

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