I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I’m a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

I don’t care if you get up in the morning and don’t wash, don’t put any make-up on, don’t do your hair, even, but you have to have clothes if you want to look different.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.

I want kids to know: Don’t wait for somebody to come along and tell you you’re special. Because that may never happen.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

I always loved advertising. If I hadn’t been in fashion, I’d have been in advertising.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

Character is power.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Feminism… I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‚Free to be You and Me.‘

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing. That’s what style is, ‚cause everybody’s got different style.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Women don’t try to use me.

There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do.

I have more suits than days of the year that I get to wear them.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

I’m 5’11, so when I wear heels, it’s definitely a really good view that I have. I’m, like, 6’2 when I wear heels, so I tend to wear cowboy boots a lot.

Everything isn’t political.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

People do not make wars; governments do.

The stylish kids on the street, they’re the ones that set the trends. The designers see what they’re doing and go and design their line and sell it back to the same kids, and it’s like, why not go directly to the source?

I’m a can-do girl.

Politicians love regulating. That’s part of the whole power structure.

It isn’t generally the case that liberals dominate entire hierarchies. That isn’t generally how it works, because the hierarchies are usually set up so that conservatives fill up the hierarchies; it’s in the nature of hierarchy.

I can’t go out with a Republican.

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.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

When you are president, being able to clearly articulate detailed plans to help the people of this country is a good thing. Knowing what you’re doing is a good thing. And let me tell you, Hillary Clinton absolutely knows what she’s doing.

The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don’t think there are any stones left to unturn.