I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

I defy gravity.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

My 2020 Vision for India is to transform it into a developed nation. That cannot be abstract; it is a lifeline.

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

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.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

It’s not an easy course. It’s not designed to be. We’re not here to get you in touch with your inner child.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

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.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

Nothing on ‚Relapse‘ and very little on ‚Recovery‘ was produced by me.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

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.

I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

I like pushing boundaries.