Top 450 Michelle Obama Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

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

— Michelle Obama

255. “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

256. “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

257. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

259. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

261. “Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imagination, to dream just a little bigger and to strive every day to reach those dreams.”

— Michelle Obama

262. “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

263. “One of the greatest lessons life has taught me is that adaptability and preparedness are paradoxically linked. For me, preparedness is part of the armor I wear. I plan, rehearse, and do my homework ahead of anything that feels even remotely like a test. This helps me to operate with more calm under stressful circumstances, knowing I will most often, regardless of what happens, find some pathway through. Being organized and prepared helps keep the floor feeling more solid beneath my feet.”

— Michelle Obama

264. “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

265. “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

266. “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

267. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

269. “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

270. “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

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. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

274. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

276. “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

277. “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

278. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

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

— Michelle Obama

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

— Michelle Obama

282. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

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

— Michelle Obama

285. “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

286. “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

287. “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

288. “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

289. “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

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

— Michelle Obama

291. “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

292. “I’m varying my workouts so it’s not just cardio but also includes moves to maintain my flexibility.”

— Michelle Obama

293. “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

294. “She climbed out of the car, giving me no choice but to drive. Get over it and just live a little was her message.”

— Michelle Obama

295. “If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others. I wasn’t interested in slotting myself into a passive role, waiting for Barack’s team to give me direction. After coming through the crucible of the last year, I knew that I would never allow myself to get that banged up again.”

— Michelle Obama

296. “Life with Barack would never be dull.”

— Michelle Obama

297. “Our afternoons together taught me that there was no formula for motherhood. No single approach could be deemed right or wrong. This was useful to see. Regardless of who was living which way and why, every small child in that playroom was cherished and growing just fine.”

— Michelle Obama

298. “I couldn’t help but notice who among my friends had more bracelets or Barbies than I did, or who got to buy their clothes at the mall instead of having a mom who sewed everything on the cheap using Butterick patterns at home. 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.”

— Michelle Obama

299. “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

300. “He was like a wind that threatened to unsettle everything.”

— Michelle Obama