Favorite Quotes from FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s Tuskegee Commencement Address

ABC Breaking US News | ABC Politics News

First Lady Michelle Obama gave a passionate commencement speech this weekend at historically black Tuskegee University Saturday; here are some of our favorite quotes from her words of wisdom:

“There will be times the world won’t always see you in these caps and gowns. They won’t know how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed to make it to this day.”
She told the 500 graduates to trust themselves to “chart your own course and make your own mark in the world.”

Michelle Obama said she refused to let the “sting” of racial bias define her.
“Over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited a little bit of ‘uppityism,'” the first lady said. “Cable news charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s baby mamma.’

“All of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting, all of it was just noise,” she said. “It did not define me, it didn’t change who I was, and most importantly, it couldn’t hold me back.”

“Here’s the thing, the road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me. There will be times, when you feel like folks look right past you or they see just a fraction of who you really are.”

“But graduates, today I want to be very clear that those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up, not an excuse to lose hope. We can take on these deep rooted problems and together, we can overcome anything.”

“Vote, vote, vote, vote, that’s how we move forward,” Obama said, telling graduates to focus on their own truth.

“I love our daughters more than anything in the world, more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being mom-in-chief is and always will be job number one.”

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