I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

As apostles and prophets, we are concerned not only for our children and grandchildren but for yours as well – and for each of God’s children.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man’s idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

I always wanted a family.

I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. They keep saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all. And yet they just carry on like before.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

Work ends up dehumanizing people.

I delayed my father’s funeral because of cricket.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

My biggest competitor was my mum. I used to try to beat her at Chinese chequers, chess, carrom, volleyball, badminton, football, wrestling.

I don’t keep people around me that aren’t family. You don’t get to stay. Unless you’re eating at the table with us, you’re not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

Children have always responded to me because I have that cartoon-character look.

I come from a family of 12, so I kind of got a little lost as a child.

The ‚Maddox Jolie-Pitt‘ Foundation’s work is inspired by our children and their connections to particular countries.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.