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At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

Michelle Obama

Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Age Children Enough Investment Myself Survive Young
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
Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Father Gift People Time
People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.
MICHELLE OBAMA

People Powerful Strong Togetherness
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
At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hope Improvement Mindset Myself
Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Instagram Captions Life Story Yourself
The burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Student
Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Inspirational Result
His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Book Himself Money
It was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once—to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Direction Live Plant Possible Success
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
Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses, swapped back and forth and over again.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Friendship Kindness Woman
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
The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Art Design Fashion Freedom History Music Poetry Time
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 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
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
The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Care Education Health Pieces Truth
And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Human Myself Willing
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
You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Decision Fear Possible Yourself
America, our moment is now, Barack said. Our moment is now.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Moment Ourselves Present
I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hard Learning Myself
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
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
It felt perverse, how the world just carried on. How everyone was still here, except for my Suzanne.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Carry Exception Myself World

At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

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At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

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