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

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president - and the president alone - who always makes the final call.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

America is just downright mean.

All of us are mentors. You're mentors right here and now. And one of the things I've always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.