Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.

On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

I’m different than most people. When I cross the finish line of a big race, I see that people are ecstatic, but I’m thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow. It’s as if my journey is everlasting, and there is no finish line.

I love wearing whatever is comfortable, and that could be something which was in trend years ago. So, I don’t follow fashion.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

We have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

When I arrived, at first a lot of people were like, ‚This kid is different.‘

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

Naturally, there are times when every woman likes to be flattered… to feel she is the most important thing in someone’s world. Only a man can paint this picture.

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Passion is needed for any great work, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are required in big doses.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

I’m not a sheep.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

Children make your life important.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.