black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Choice Forever Yourself
When they go low, we go high.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Inspirational One Liner Success
It felt perverse, how the world just carried on. How everyone was still here, except for my Suzanne.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Carry Exception Myself World
Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Inspirational Result
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
The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hurt Myself Person Understand
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
We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Patience Plant See
If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Quick Yourself
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
America, our moment is now, Barack said. Our moment is now.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Moment Ourselves Present
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

Alone Carry Challenge Change Deserve Existence History Remember See Tolerance
But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting—a suggestion of failure long before I’d even tried to succeed.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Myself Plant Result Success
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
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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Michelle Obama Quotes