The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

For an Ethiopian mother, if you have a chubby kid, it means you’re doing something good.

I’ve always put everybody else’s child first before my own health, before my own outfit, before my own time frame.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

My three children have brought me great joy.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

I do not raise brats!

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I’m worrying about people I care about, you know, the people I love. The little aches and pains of my children that I, my family. That’s always first.

If my edge is dull, my sword is dull, and I don’t want to fight another guy whose sword is dull. If you’ve got two steel swords going back and forth hitting each other, what’s gonna happen? Both of them are going to get sharper. Everybody that’s in the industry has lost their edge.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

I’ve been a huge fan of Chris Martin forever; it’d be awesome to work with him. He’s really kind, and he’s been really encouraging when we’ve met.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

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.

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

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

I have a cult-like following because I exemplify what it is to be a human being.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I’m sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

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.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

I don’t like people going behind my back.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

I always say I’m one of the toughest mama’s boys you’re ever gonna meet. And I say that to send a message to all the young thugs out there; that it’s nothing to be ashamed of to say you love your mother.