Top 450 Michelle Obama Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else’s, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.”

— Michelle Obama

252. “It was possible... to live on two planes at once – to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress. You got somewhere by building that better reality, if at first only in your own mind... You may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.”

— Michelle Obama

253. “They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.”

— Michelle Obama

254. “I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most – is it “angry” or “black” or “woman”?”

— Michelle Obama

255. “Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.”

— Michelle Obama

256. “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

257. “Fashion is about so much more than just a pretty pair of pumps or the perfect hemline. For so many people across the country, it is a calling, it is a career, and it’s a way they feed their families.”

— Michelle Obama

258. “It’s a curious thing to realize, the in-betweenness one feels being African American in Africa. It gave me a hard-to-explain feeling of sadness, a sense of being unrooted in both lands.”

— Michelle Obama

259. “If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.”

— Michelle Obama

260. “I like the idea of being rigorous about friendship.”

— Michelle Obama

261. “My early successes in life were, I knew, a product of the consistent love and high expectations with which I was surrounded as a child, both at home and at school.”

— Michelle Obama

262. “This is what a control freak learns inside the compressed otherworld of college, maybe above all else: There are simply other ways of being.”

— Michelle Obama

263. “This would be the only time in eight years that he’d request my presence in the middle of a workday, the two of us rearranging our schedules to be alone together for a moment of dim comfort. Usually, work was work and home was home, but for us, as for many people, the tragedy in Newtown shattered every window and blew down every fence. When I walked into the Oval Office, Barack and I embraced silently. There was nothing to say. No words.”

— Michelle Obama

264. “I grew up with a disabled dad in a too-small house with not much money in a starting-to-fail neighborhood, and I also grew up surrounded by love and music in a diverse city in a country where an education can take you far. I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.”

— Michelle Obama

265. “You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.”

— Michelle Obama

266. “I was female, black, and strong, which to certain people, maintaining a certain mind-set, translated only to “angry.”

— Michelle Obama

267. “It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look.”

— Michelle Obama

268. “My kids are normal. If they could eat burgers and fries and ice cream every day, they would. And so would I. But that doesn’t sustain us.”

— Michelle Obama

269. “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

270. “Nobody who has the words “first” and “black” attached to them ever would. I stood at the foot of the mountain, knowing I’d need to climb my way into favor.”

— Michelle Obama

271. “Which led to a second revelation about certain nonprofits, especially young-person-driven start-ups like Public Allies, and many of the bighearted, tirelessly passionate people who work in them: Unlike me, it seemed they could actually afford to be there, their virtue discreetly underwritten by privilege, whether it was that they didn’t have student loans to pay off or perhaps had an inheritance to someday look forward to and thus weren’t worried about saving for the future.”

— Michelle Obama

272. “There are truths we face and truths we ignore.”

— Michelle Obama

273. “To get kids involved in meal planning and preparation, create games out of trying new foods, and provide ample opportunities for physical activity, recognizing it may take some time to find an activity they truly enjoy.”

— Michelle Obama

274. “While we stayed rent-free in the residence and had our utilities and staffing paid for, we nonetheless covered all other living expenses, which seemed to add up quickly, especially given the fancy-hotel quality of everything. We got an itemized bill each month for every food item and roll of toilet paper.”

— Michelle Obama

275. “There are simply other ways of being.”

— Michelle Obama

276. “Policies that support families aren’t political issues. They’re personal. They’re the causes I carry with me every single day.”

— Michelle Obama

277. “In Hawaii, Barack’s intense and brainy side receded somewhat, while the laid-back part of him flourished. He was at home. And home was where he didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.”

— Michelle Obama

278. “Throughout my life, I’ve learned to make choices that make me happy and make sense for me. Even my husband is happier when I’m happy.”

— Michelle Obama

279. “For me, as a mother, I am just, you know, I just can’t put into words how important it is for every American, for every mother, for every person in this country, to have healthcare.”

— Michelle Obama

280. “Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.”

— Michelle Obama

281. “It’s hard to make speeches with your hair in your face!”

— Michelle Obama

282. “Barack and I developed a special fondness for Queen Elizabeth, who reminded Barack of his no-nonsense grandmother. Over the course of many visits she showed me that humanity is more important than protocol or formality.”

— Michelle Obama

283. “Meeting Nelson Mandela gave me the perspective I needed a couple of years into our White House journey – that real change happens slowly, not just over months and years but over decades and lifetimes.”

— Michelle Obama

284. “Maybe you spend the whole day considering new ways to live before finally you fit every window back into its frame and empty your bucket of Pine-Sol into the sink. And maybe now all your certainty returns, because yes, truly, it’s spring and once again you’ve made the choice to stay.”

— Michelle Obama

285. “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

286. “I wanted to believe that there was a guy who’d materialize and become everything to me, who’d be sexy and solid and whose effect would be so immediate and deep that I’d be willing to rearrange my priorities. It just wasn’t the guy standing in front of me right now.”

— Michelle Obama

287. “No one, I realized, was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it.”

— Michelle Obama

288. “I’ve always been a closet jock, but when I got married and had kids, that fell by the wayside.”

— Michelle Obama

289. “Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.”

— Michelle Obama

290. “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

291. “I knew what mattered to me. I didn’t want to be some sort of well-dressed ornament who showed up at parties and ribbon cuttings. I wanted to do things that were purposeful and lasting.”

— Michelle Obama

292. “I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.”

— Michelle Obama

293. “Most people were good people if you just treated them well.”

— Michelle Obama

294. “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

295. “And in the end, I hadn’t needed to show her anything. I was only showing myself.”

— Michelle Obama

296. “People are always going to have opinions, and people have a right to their opinions.”

— Michelle Obama

297. “It sounds a little like a bad joke, doesn’t it? What happens when a solitude-loving individualist marries an outgoing family woman who does not love solitude one bit?”

— Michelle Obama

298. “Southside spoiled the dog the same way he spoiled me, with food and love and tolerance, all of it a silent, earnest plea never to leave him.”

— Michelle Obama

299. “So many of my friends judged potential mates from the outside in, focusing first on their looks and financial prospects. If it turned out the person they’d chosen wasn’t a good communicator or was uncomfortable with being vulnerable, they seemed to think time or marriage vows would fix the problem. But Barack arrived in my life a wholly formed person. From our very first conversation, he’d shown me that he wasn’t self-conscious about expressing fear or weakness and that he valued being truthful.”

— Michelle Obama

300. “On my way, I was learning, was the product of Barack’s eternal optimism, an indication of his eagerness to be home that did nothing to signify when he would actually arrive. Almost home was not a geo-locator but rather a state of mind. Sometimes he was on his way but needed to stop in to have one last forty-five-minute conversation with a colleague before he got into the car. Other times, he was almost home but forgot to mention that he was first going to fit in a quick workout at the gym.”

— Michelle Obama