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Change, challenge, and power are universal experiences that we all grapple with at various points in our lives. How do we navigate through uncertain times and find the strength to overcome obstacles? In her latest book, “The Light We Carry,” released on November 15, 2022, Michelle Obama opens a candid and honest dialogue with readers, sharing her insights and reflections on these profound questions.
Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and former First Lady, Michelle Obama offers a series of fresh stories and profound advice on how to adapt to change and overcome challenges. She shares the habits and principles that have guided her in building enduring and honest relationships, addressing feelings of self-doubt, and finding strength in community.
With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also delves into issues of race, gender, and visibility, encouraging readers to confront fear, find resilience, and live with boldness.
One of the powerful quotes from the book is, “What I want to say, then, is stay vigorous and faithful, humble and empathetic. Tell the truth, do your best by others, keep perspective, understand history and context. Stay prudent, stay tough, and stay outraged. But more than anything, don’t forget to do the work.” This quote encapsulates Obama’s call to action, urging readers to persevere, be compassionate, and make a positive impact on the world despite the uncertainties.
In “The Light We Carry,” Obama emphasizes the importance of nurturing and empowering children. She writes, “She tells me that it’s important to always presume the best about children – that it’s preferable to let them live up to your expectations and high regard rather than asking them to live down to your doubts and worries.” This quote highlights Obama’s belief in the inherent goodness and potential of children and encourages readers to approach them with positivity and faith.
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama
Obama’s words also shed light on the courage needed when embarking on new journeys. She writes, “When you’re beginning something new, you can’t always see where you’re headed with it. You have to be okay with not knowing exactly how things will turn out.” This quote exemplifies Obama’s encouragement to embrace the unknown and be open to new experiences, even when the outcome is uncertain.
The following list of quotes will inspire and provoke thought, offering insights into topics such as leadership, self-empowerment, and the importance of community. Let’s explore some of these quotes and their meanings, and reflect on how Obama’s lessons can be applied to our own lives.
I hope you will enjoy the following list of 88 quotes for The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama!
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The Light We Carry Quotes
- “I believe that each of us carries a bit of inner brightness, something entirely unique and individual. A flame that’s worth protecting. When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it. When we learn to foster what’s unique in the people around us, we become better able to build compassionate communities and make meaningful change.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “If you choose to try to make a life with another person, you will live by that choice. You’d find yourself having to choose again and again to remain rather than run. It helps if you enter into a committed relationship prepared to work, ready to be humbled and willing to accept and even enjoy living in that in-between space, bouncing between the poles of beautiful and horrible, sometimes in the span of a single conversation, sometimes over the course of years. And inside of that choice and those years you’ll almost certainly come to see that there is no such thing as a 50-50 balance, instead it will be like beads on an abacus, sliding back and forth, the maths rarely tidy, the equation never quite solved….” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Our hurts become our fears. Our fears become our limits. For many of us, this can be a heavy inheritance, carried by generations. It’s a lot to try to push back against, to try to unlearn.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When we allow ourselves to celebrate tiny victories as important and meaningful, we start to understand the incremental nature of change—how one vote can help change our democracy; how raising a child who is whole and loved can help change a nation; how educating one girl can change a whole village for the better.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “One light feeds another. One strong family lends strength to more. One engaged community can ignite those around it. This is the power of the light we carry.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Life has shown me that strong friendships are most often the result of strong intentions. Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands being bold.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When someone chooses to lift the curtain on a perceived imperfection in her story, on a circumstance or condition that traditionally might be considered to be a weakness, what she’s often actually revealing is the source code for her steadiness and strength.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “There’s no way to eliminate the ache of being human, but I do think we can diminish it. This starts when we challenge ourselves to become less afraid to share, more ready to listen—when the wholeness of your story adds to the wholeness of mine. I see a little of you. You see a little of me. We can’t know all of it, but we’re better off as familiars.
Any time we grip hands with another soul and recognize some piece of the story they’re trying to tell, we are acknowledging and affirming two truths at once: We’re lonely and yet we’re not alone.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times - “Read books by people whose perspective is different from yours, listen to voices you haven’t heard before, look for narratives that are new to you. In them and with them, you might end up finding more room for yourself.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “We only hurt ourselves when we hide our realness away.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “It’s okay to pace yourself, get a little rest, and speak of your struggles out loud. It’s okay to prioritize your wellness,” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Our differences are treasures and they’re also tools. They are useful, valid, worthy, and important to share. Recognizing this, not only in ourselves but in the people around us, we begin to rewrite more and more stories of not-mattering. We start to change the paradigms around who belongs, creating more space for more people. Step by step by step, we can lessen the loneliness of not-belonging.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “I lean on each individual at different times and in different ways. Which is another thing worth recognizing about friendship. No one person, no one relationship will fulfill your every need. Not every friend can offer you safety or support on every day. Not every one can or will show up precisely when or how you need them to. And this is why it’s good to continue always making room at your table, to keep yourself open to gathering more friends. You will never not need them, and you will never stop learning from them.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “There’s nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can’t or don’t see. When you are different, you can feel as if you’re operating with a different map, a different set of navigational challenges, than those around you. Sometimes, you feel like you have no map at all. Your differentness will often precede you into a room; people see it before they see you. Which leaves you with the task of overcoming” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Real-world connections most often tend to cut against stereotypes. They can be remarkably calming, in fact—a small but potent way to reset a bad mood or challenge broader feelings of mistrust. The only thing is that in order to get there, you do first need to lay down your shield.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Going high is something you do rather than merely feel. It’s not some call to be complacent and wait around for change, or to sit on the sidelines as others struggle. It is not about accepting the conditions of oppression or letting cruelty and power go unchallenged. The notion of going high shouldn’t raise any questions about whether we are obligated to fight for more fairness, decency, and justice in this world; rather, it’s about how we fight, how we go about trying to solve the problems we encounter, and how we sustain ourselves long enough to be effective rather than burn out.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in. It means that you have to be judicious with your energy and clear in your convictions. You push ahead in some instances and pull back in others, giving yourself opportunities to rest and restore. It helps to recognize that you are operating on a budget, as all of us are. When it comes to our attention, our time, our credibility, our goodwill toward and from others, we work with a limited but renewable set of resources.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The only love story I know, is the one I happen to live inside everyday. Your path towards certainty, if that’s even what you’re after, will look different from mine. Just as your conception of home and who belongs there with you, will always be unique to you. Only slowly do most of us figure out what we need in intimate relationships and what we’re able to give to them. We practice, we learn, we mess up. We sometimes acquire tools that don’t actually serve us. …we obsess, overthink and misplace our energy…we retreat when hurt, we armor up when scared, we might attack when provoked, or yield when ashamed.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “worry and discomfort of taking a risk, you’re potentially costing yourself an opportunity. In clinging only to what you know, you are making your world small. You are robbing yourself of chances to grow.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Go forth with a spoonful of fear and return with a wagonful of competence.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “when it does work, it can feel like an actual, honest-to-god miracle, which is what love is, after all. That’s the whole point. Any long-term partnership, really, is an act of stubborn faith.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Friends will come and go, taking on more or less importance as you move through different phases of life. You may have a small group of friends, or just a few one-on-one friendships. All of that is okay. What matters most is the quality of your relationships. It’s good to be discerning about who you trust, who you bring close. With new relationships, I find myself quietly assessing whether I feel safe and whether, inside the context of a budding friendship, I feel seen and appreciated for who I am. With our friends, we are always looking for very simple reassurances that we matter, that our light is recognized and our voice is heard—and we owe our friends the same. I want to say, too, that it’s okay to step back from or downsize a difficult friendship. Sometimes we have to let certain friends go, or at least diminish our reliance on them.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “I’ve progressed only slowly to where I am today. If you are a young person reading this, please remember to be patient with yourself. You are at the beginning of a long and interesting journey, one that will not always be comfortable. You will spend years gathering data about who you are and how you operate and only slowly will you find your way towards more certainty and a stronger sense of self. Only gradually will you begin to discover and use your light!” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “That’s what tools are for. They help keep us upright and balanced, better able to coexist with uncertainty. They help us deal with flux, to manage when life feels out of control. And they help us continue onward, even while in discomfort, even as we live with our strands exposed.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “What does it mean to be comfortably afraid? For me, the idea is simple. It’s about learning to deal wisely with fear, finding a way to let your nerves guide you rather than stop you. It’s settling yourself in the presence of life’s inevitable zombies and monsters so that you may contend with them more rationally, and trusting your own assessment of what’s harmful and what’s not. When you live this way, you are neither fully comfortable nor fully afraid. You accept that there’s a middle zone and learn to operate inside of it, awake and aware, but not held back.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “For me, going high usually involves taking a pause before I react. It is a form of self-control, a line laid between our best and worst impulses. Going high is about resisting the temptation to participate in shallow fury and corrosive contempt and instead figuring out how to respond with a clear voice to whatever is shallow and corrosive around you. It’s what happens when you take a reaction and mature it into a response.
Because here’s the thing: Emotions are not plans. They don’t solve problems or right any wrongs. You can feel them—you will feel them, inevitably—but be careful about letting them guide you. Rage can be a dirty windshield. Hurt is like a broken steering wheel. Disappointment will only ride, sulking and unhelpful, in the back seat. If you don’t do something constructive with them, they’ll take you straight into a ditch.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times - “Going high is work—often hard, often tedious, often inconvenient, and often bruising. You will need to disregard the haters and the doubters. You will need to build some walls between yourself and those who would prefer to see you fail. And you will need to keep working when others around you may have grown tired or cynical and given up.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “There’s nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can’t or don’t see.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “A successful partnership is like a winning basketball team made up of two deaf individuals with fully developed and interchangeable sets of skills. Each player has to know not just how to shoot but also how to dribble, pass and defend. That doesn’t mean there aren’t weaknesses or differences you will compensate for in each other. It’s just that together you’ll have to cover the full court keeping yourselves versatile over time. A partnership doesn’t actually change who you are even as it challenges you to be accommodating of another person’s needs… The change is in what is between us, the million small adjustments, compromises and sacrifices, we’ve each made in order to accommodate the close presence of the other.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Our hurts become our fears. Our fears become our limits.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “we would catch sight of everything we were hoping not to see—his vulnerability, our helplessness, the uncertainty and harder times ahead.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Because here’s the thing: Emotions are not plans. They don’t solve problems or right any wrongs. You can feel them—you will feel them, inevitably—but be careful about letting them guide you. Rage can be a dirty windshield. Hurt is like a broken steering wheel. Disappointment will only ride, sulking and unhelpful, in the back seat. If you don’t do something constructive with them, they’ll take you straight into a ditch. My power has always hinged on my ability to keep myself out of the ditch.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The challenge in leading a big life becomes trying to find ways to protect your dreams and your drive, to remain tough without being overly guarded, to stay nimble and open to growth, allowing others to see you for who you are. It’s about learning how to shelter your flame without hiding its light.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “What’s sturdy and effective for you may not be what’s sturdy and effective in the hands of your boss, or your mother, or your life partner. A spatula won’t help you change a flat tire; a tire iron won’t help you fry an egg. (Though by all means, feel free to prove me wrong.) Tools evolve over time, based on our circumstances and growth. What works in one phase of life may not work in another.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The goal, instead, is to find someone who will do the work with you, not for you, contributing on all fronts and in all ways.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “How do we get more comfortable, less paralyzed, inside of uncertainty? What tools do we have to sustain ourselves? Where do we find extra pillars of support? How can we create safety and stability for others? And if we work as one, what might we manage to overcome together?” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “For now, though, I want to offer one small reminder, which is that real growth begins with how gladly you’re able to see yourself.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “No one person, no one relationship, will fulfill your every need. Not every friend can offer you safety or support on every day. Not everyone can, or will, show up precisely when or how you need them to. And this is why it’s good to always continue making room at your table, to keep yourself open to gathering more friends. You will never not need them, and you will never stop learning from them.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “[Life is] about learning how to shelter your flame without hiding its light.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “HOW DO ANY of us turn into adults, with real grown-up lives and real grown-up relationships? Mostly through trial and error, it would seem. By just figuring it out. Many of us, I think, puzzle out our identities only over time, figuring out who we are and what we need in order to get by. We approximate our way into maturity, often following some loose idea of what we believe grown-up life is supposed to look like.
We practice and learn, learn and practice. We make mistakes and then start over again. For a long time, a lot feels experimental, unsettled. We try on different ways of being. We sample and discard different attitudes, approaches, influences, and tools for living until, piece by piece, we begin to better understand what suits us best, what helps us most.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times - “Our vaults can leave us lonely, isolated from others, exacerbating the pain of invisibility. And that’s a tough way to go. The amount we hold there, hidden out of sight and guarded by instinctive feelings of fear or shame, can contribute to a larger sense that we don’t belong or don’t matter—that our truth will never comfortably fit with the reality of the world we’re living in. In keeping our vulnerabilities private, we never get the chance to know who else is out there, who else might understand or even be helped by whatever it is we’re holding back.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “What I want to say, then, is stay vigorous and faithful, humble and empathetic. Tell the truth, do your best by others, keep perspective, understand history and context. Stay prudent, stay tough, and stay outraged. But more than anything, don’t forget to do the work.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “She tells me that it’s important to always presume the best about children—that it’s preferable to let them live up to your expectations and high regard rather than asking them to live down to your doubts and worries.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “competence was a form of safety; knowing how to step forward despite our nerves was protection in and of itself.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When you’re beginning something new, you can’t always see where you’re headed with it. You have to be okay with not knowing exactly how things will turn out.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “How do we build places where gladness lives—for ourselves and for others, and most especially for children—and to which we will always want to return?” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The same might be said of an exceptional friend. If you’re lucky, you might end up with at least a few melded into your life, people who become stalwart and unshakable, the friends who accept you without judgment, show up for the hard stuff, and give you joy—not just for a semester, or for the two years you live in the same city, but over the course of many years. Barnacles are not showy, either, which I see as also true of the best friendships. They need no witnesses. They are not trying to accomplish something that can be measured or cashed in upon; the substance mostly happens behind the scenes.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Which is another important thing to remember about friendship: You’re crazy if you think you get to make all the rules. What mattered was that we just kept showing up, in closeness, in commitment, in compromise, and even in fatigue. For me, it’s all about showing up.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “And for me, there is no quicker or more efficient way to obliterate stress and get focused on the present moment than to throw myself into a hard-core, edge-pushing workout. Or even better, a series of them. I guess you might say that vigor is one of my Love Languages.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Being busy is a kind of tool this way. It’s like giving yourself a suit of armor to wear: If someone’s shooting arrows in your direction, you’re less likely to register any hits. There simply isn’t time.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “By her own measure, my mom is nothing special. She also likes to say that while she loves us dearly, my brother and I are not special, either. We’re just two kids who had enough love and a good amount of luck and happened to do well as a result. She tries to remind people that neighborhoods like the South Side of Chicago are packed full of “little Michelles and little Craigs.” They’re in every school, on every block. It’s just that too many of them get overlooked and underestimated, so too much of that potential goes unrecognized. This would probably count as the foundational point of my mom’s larger philosophy: “All children are great children.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “I often say that it’s much harder to hate up close.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Any time your circumstances start to feel all-consuming, I suggest you try going in the other direction—toward the small. Look for something that’ll help rearrange your thoughts, a pocket of contentedness where you can live for a while. And by this I don’t mean sitting passively in front of your television or scrolling through your phone. Find something that’s active, something that asks for your mind but uses your body as well. Immerse yourself in a process. And forgive yourself for temporarily ducking out of the storm.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The notion of going high shouldn’t raise any questions about whether we are obligated to fight for more fairness, decency, and justice in this world; rather, it’s about how we fight, how we go about trying” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “The thick-skin part means learning what to do with your rage and your hurt, where to put it, how to convert it into actual power.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “stay vigorous and faithful, humble and empathetic. Tell the truth, do your best by others, keep perspective, understand history and context. Stay prudent, stay tough, and stay outraged.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When you start to rewrite the story of not-mattering, you start to find a new center. You remove yourself from other people’s mirrors and begin speaking more fully from your own experience, your own knowing place. You become better able to attach to your pride and more readily step over all the despites. It doesn’t remove the obstacles, but I’ve found that it helps to shrink them. It helps you to count your victories, even the small ones, and know that you’re doing okay.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “I’ve come to understand that sometimes the big stuff becomes easier to handle when you deliberately put something small alongside it. When everything starts to feel big and therefore scary and insurmountable, when I hit a point of feeling or thinking or seeing too much, I’ve learned to make the choice to go toward the small.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Sometimes you recognize a tool only after it starts working for you. And sometimes, it turns out, the smallest of tools can help us to sort through the largest of feelings. I learned this a couple of years ago when I mail-ordered myself some knitting needles without quite realizing what I needed them for.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Find one thing you can actively complete and give yourself over to it, even if it is of no immediate benefit to anybody but yourself. Maybe you spend an afternoon wallpapering your bathroom, or baking bread, or doing nail art, or making jewelry. It could be two hours spent meticulously producing your mom’s fried chicken recipe, or ten hours building a miniature replica of Notre Dame Cathedral in your basement. Allow yourself the gift of absorption.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Going high is a commitment, and not a particularly glamorous one, to keep moving forward. It only works when we do the work.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “It wasn’t that they couldn’t. It was just that they didn’t. It’s likely they never even gave it a thought.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “I guess you could say that I grew up focused exactly that way, aimed toward a life of sock buying rather than sock mending.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “diffuse and perhaps even more powerful for its ability to agitate our nerves even when there’s no immediate threat, when we are only imagining how things might possibly go wrong, afraid of what could be.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “In all my decades of staying busy, I had always presumed that my head was fully in charge of everything, including telling my hands what to do. It hadn’t really ever occurred to me to let things flow the opposite way. But that’s what knitting did. It reversed the flow. It buckled my churning brain into the back seat and allowed my hands to drive the car for a while. It detoured me away from my anxiety, just enough to provide some relief.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When I looked out into those audiences, I saw something that confirmed what I knew to be true about my country and about the world more generally. I saw a colorful crowd, full of differences, and better for it. These were spaces where diversity was recognized and celebrated as a strength. I saw different ages, races, genders, ethnicities, identities, outfits, you name it—people laughing, clapping, crying, sharing. I sincerely believe that many of those people had turned up for reasons that stretched well past me or my book. My feeling was they’d shown up at least in part to feel less alone in the world, to locate some lost sense of belonging. Their presence—the energy, warmth, and diversity of those spaces—helped tell a certain story. People were there, I believe, because it felt good—it felt great, actually—to mix our differentness with togetherness.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “speak often with those who struggle with a sense of differentness, who feel undervalued or invisible, drained by their efforts to overcome, feeling that their light has been dimmed. I have met young people from all over the world who are trying to find their voice and create space for their most authentic selves inside their relationships and their workplaces. They are full of questions: How do I create meaningful connections?” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “It should go without saying that not every tool helps in every situation, or uniformly for every person. What’s sturdy and effective for you may not be what’s sturdy and effective in the hands of your boss, or your mother, or your life partner. A spatula won’t help you change a flat tire; a tire iron won’t help you fry an egg. (Though by all means, feel free to prove me wrong.) Tools evolve over time, based on our circumstances and growth. What works in one phase of life may not work in another. But I do believe that there’s value in learning to identify the habits that keep us centered and grounded versus those that trigger anxiety or feed our insecurities.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “He just used solid information as a means of unbundling the threat and giving me tools to stay safe.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “He never told me to get over my fear, nor did he dismiss it as irrational or dumb. He just used solid information as a means of unbundling the threat and giving me tools to stay safe.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “When everything starts to feel big and therefore scary and insurmountable, when I hit a point of feeling or thinking or seeing too much, I’ve learned to make the choice to go toward the small.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Nothing can dim the light that shines from within. —Maya Angelou” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “new friends tended to pop up like daisies in my life, and I made the effort to cultivate them. If I encountered someone who seemed interesting, whether at work, or a holiday party, or a hair salon, or, as was increasingly the case, through my children and their activities, I usually made a point of following up, getting that person’s phone number or email address, proposing that we grab lunch sometime or meet up at a playground.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “It remains a damning fact of life that we ask too much of those who are marginalized and too little of those who are not.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “We were friends now, and would stay that way. A couple of years ago, black-ish actress Tracee Ellis Ross wrote a touching tribute to her friend, the fashion editor Samira Nasr, on Facebook. She described how the two of them had met and bonded while working together at a magazine. Tracee had caught sight of Samira across a room and thought, “She has similar hair…I bet we could be friends.” And it turned out she was right. They’ve been besties for more than twenty-five years now. “I couldn’t do this life thing without her,” Tracee wrote in her post. “I am a barnacle on her life.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “You can’t process the challenges of being different all on your own. It’s just too big, too painful, to keep inside. To try to carry it alone can be corrosive, draining.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Whether you grew up with the Confederate flag flying over your statehouse, or played in public parks anchored by bronzed tributes to slave owners, or were taught your country’s history through a canon formed almost exclusively by whiteness, you have those stories inside you. The Mellon Foundation recently funded a study of monuments around the United States, finding that the vast majority of them honored white men; half were enslavers and 40 percent were born into wealth. Black and Indigenous people made up only about 10 percent of those commemorated; women just 6 percent. Statues of mermaids outnumbered statues of female members of Congress by a ratio of eleven to one. I’ll” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Yes, that’s exactly right. When you want to make a difference, when you want to change the world, your mental health will sometimes get in the way.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “Most of what I’m describing here is abstract fear—fear of embarrassment or fear of rejection, worries that things will go wrong or someone will get hurt. What I’ve come to realize, too, is that jeopardy is woven into the experience of being human, regardless of who you are, what you look like, or where you live. We may encounter it in different ways and with different stakes, but not one of us is immune. Consider that the Oxford English Dictionary defines “jeopardy” as danger of loss, harm, or failure. Who among us isn’t walking around fully attuned to those dangers?” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “What do I most hope for them? I hope they find home, whatever that ends up looking like.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “We can’t know for sure what the future holds, but I do think it’s important to remember that we are also not helpless in the face of our worries.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “You don’t have to like your teacher, and she doesn’t have to like you,” she said. “But she’s got math in her head that you need in yours, so maybe you should just go to school and get the math.” She looked at me then and smiled, as if this should be the simplest thing in the world to grasp. “You can come home to be liked,” she said. “We will always like you here.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “inside of uncertainty? What tools do we have to sustain ourselves? Where do we find extra pillars of support? How can we create safety and stability for others? And if we work as one, what might we manage to overcome together?” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
- “We practice our faith in the smallest of ways. And in practicing it, we remember what’s possible. With it, we are saying I can. We are saying I care. We are not giving up.” ― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
Thank you for reading my list of Michelle Obama’s best The Light We Carry quotes! Happy reading! ❤️