Michelle Obama Quotes

I grew up poor.

I am from a poor background in Portugal. We were medium-down, not down-and-out. My parents felt problems around food in the past but they made sure I did not miss anything. But there was nothing extra, no luxuries.

I didn't have life that good coming up. I wasn't born with a lot of money. We weren't dirt poor, but we weren't rich. All I knew was struggle.

I grew up in an underprivileged home.

The hard part that I had to go through in life, period, is living in poverty and not being able to get what I want.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

I came from poverty and was part of those circumstances.

Like everyone, I am formed by my background, and mine was - well, we didn't have a lot of money. I didn't live in a cardboard box, but I did live in a place where, at the end of the week, the money was gone.

I was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.

I thought it was normal to recycle pants and shoes from your older cousins. That was just my way of life. At the end of the month, there was not much food in the refrigerator and you're hoping the first comes so food can come again. You never forget those things.

Basically as a working class boy I understand when there's not enough money to put food on the table and not knowing where the next dollar comes in from. When you've been in that environment as a child, you never lose it.

I come from a poor family.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

Growing up in a lower-income family, you don't have the resources to make ends meet and you have to find creative ways to get by.

There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty.

I know what poverty is.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

I was raised in a lower-income family, and we were wild.

My mom was born poor, raised poor, and was going to die poor.

I always wanted to be a boy scout but was too poor. Couldn't do it.

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

Poverty demoralizes.

When I was young, poverty was so common that it didn’t have a name.