Michelle Obama

By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation [sic] of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to [sic] their plight.

Barack is one of the smartest men we will see in our lifetime.

To Mom, Dad, Craig and all of my special friends: Thank-you for loving me and always making me feel good about myself.

One of the things — the important aspects of this race — is role modeling what good families should look like. Our view was that, if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House.

You can't handle goody bags. Let me explain the goody bag thing. You have to go into the party store and choose the bags. Then you have to choose what to put in the bags, and what is in the boys' bags has to be different from what is in the girls' bags. You'd walk in there and wander around the aisles for an hour, and then your head would explode.

He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.

Barack has led by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test—for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.

Translating hope into action is something Barack has done for his entire career.

We need to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. We have lost our way. And it begins with inspiration. It begins with leadership.