Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work.
MICHELLE OBAMANow 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.
More Michelle Obama Quotes
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Marriage, he told me early on, struck him as an unnecessary and overhyped convention.
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If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
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His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
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The burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.
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Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
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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.
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As a kid, you learn to measure long before you understand the size or value of anything. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn that you’ve been measuring all wrong.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit.
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I was determined to be someone who told the truth, using my voice to lift up the voiceless when I could, and to not disappear on people in need. I understood that when I showed up somewhere,
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In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.
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Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?
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You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
MICHELLE OBAMA