I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

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

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

I am happy and I’m single.

My confidence is easy to shake. I am very well aware of all of my flaws. I am aware of all the insecurities that I have.

We all have our imperfections. But I’m human, and you know, it’s important to concentrate on other qualities besides outer beauty.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

I’m not perfect.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

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.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face. You know, I prayed about it a long, long, long, long, long time, because there again, I wouldn’t want to do anything that I felt was going to be offensive to God.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.

I think a lot of people love to convolute what everyone else does in order to disempower women.

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

I thank God I’m myself and for the life I’m given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

You don’t have to be somebody different to be important. You’re important in your own right.

I think it’s so important for girls to love themselves and to treat their bodies respectfully.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

No one wants to see curvy women.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

No man is free who is not master of himself.

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.