I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

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.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

I’m going to try to unite all Americans.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There’s a thing in psychology where they think if it’s popular, it can’t be serious.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‚human stratum‘ may not be homogeneous.

The fact that over 50 per cent of the residents of Toronto are not from Canada, that is always a good thing, creatively, and for food especially. That is easily a city’s biggest strength, and it is Toronto’s unique strength.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.