Best quotes by Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.[better source needed] Dubbed the "Queen of All Media," she was the richest African-American of the 20th century, was once the world's only black billionaire, and the greatest black philanthropist in U.S. history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy. Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.
By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. Winfrey had also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries. In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and received honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard. In 2008, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue. In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, awarded by the Academy Awards and two additional Academy Award nominations. Winfey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
Oprah Winfrey quotes by category:
If you are still breathing, you have a second chance.
Don't settle for a relationship that won't let you be yourself.
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Never give up your power to another person.
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
Every choice in life either moves you forward or keeps you stuck.
You only have to believe that you can succeed, that you can be whatever your heart desires, be willing to work for it, and you can have it.
If friends disappoint you over and over, that's in large part your own fault. Once someone has shown a tendency to be self-centered, you need to recognize that and take care of yourself; people aren't going to change simply because you want them to.
You become what you believe - not what you wish or want but what you truly believe. Wherever you are in life, look at your beliefs. They put you there.
I trust that everything happens for a reason, even if we are not wise enough to see it.
Nobody’s journey is seamless or smooth. We all stumble. We all have setbacks. It’s just life’s way of saying, ‘Time to change course.’
The miracle of your existence calls for celebration every day.
Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.
The stories that you tell yourself can make or break you - no matter who you are.
What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.
Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
You get to know who you really are in a crisis.
Nothing happens until you decide. Make a decision and watch your life move forward.
You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
You don't become what you want, you become what you believe.
You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, "Excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction." It's just an experience, just an experience.
No experience is wasted. Everything in life is happening to grow you up, to fill you up, to help you become more of who you were created to be.
Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.
Let excellence be your brand... When you are excellent, you become unforgettable. Doing the right thing, even when nobody knows you're doing the right thing will always bring the right thing to you.
You are responsible for your life. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on.
You are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything.
Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe