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:
Never for a moment allow your greatness to interfere with your goodness.
Whatever your secret, live your own truth; life is too short.
There is a lesson in almost everything that you do, and getting the lesson is how you move forward. It is how you enrich your spirit.
An nice lady in the back...asked what I thought about how we begin to move forward. I think it is up to each individual, which then moves to your family, which moves to your community. Each person, in their own life, let your life be a light for peace, for justice, for all that is good. Just let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
You've got to figure out what it is you love - who you really are - and have the courage to do that.
You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
What I know for sure is that if you can survive 11 days in cramped quarters with a friend and come out laughing, your friendship is the real deal. I know ours is.
I was happy over little things: mango sorbet, and running, and the way my feet felt touching the ground when I ran.
I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.
I wasn't the cutest or the most talented, but I could get through the question-and-answer period.
Twenty minutes in the morning, 20 in the evening. Transcendental Meditation teachers have taught everyone in my company who wanted to learn how to meditate. The results have been awesome. Better sleep. Improved relationships with spouses, children, coworkers. Some people who once suffered migraines don't anymore. Greater productivity and creativity all around.
The truth is I have from the very beginning listened to my instincts. All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me.
I cannot be defined by what other people think.
I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.
Joy is one part inner peace, one part giddy delight and 100% attainable.
It is very true, that the way you think creates reality for yourself.
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo.
The biggest mistake in helping undeserved kids is not raising the bar high enough. Children will believe if you believe in them.
What I know for sure is that the only way to endure the quake is to adjust your stance. You can't avoid the daily tremors. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand.
If it never rained, nothing would grow.
You did the best you could, the best you knew how at the time." It was something like that. From Oprah on an Oprah show. Then I believe my quote above was from Maya Angelou on the Oprah show, not Oprah herself. I had heard it before but it was on Oprah's show again 1-7-09 and she said Maya had said it.
Strength times strength times strength times strength times strength times strength means power.
It does not matter how you came into the world, what matters is that you are here.
Living your best life is to find out what your calling is. Your real job on Earth is to find out what you were meant to be doing & to find a way to do that thing.
I'm not even kind of a lesbian.
You gotta be willing to fail...if you're afraid of failing, you won't get very far.
My business skills have come from being guided by my inner self - my intuition.
You have to choose love ... in the most difficult of time to shift the paradigm to that which is love.
I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, 'you are going to have to learn to do this,' and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother's life.
I'm sick of people sittin' in chairs stating their problems. Then we roll the videotape... then we have our experts on the topic... I'm in the 'What's next?' phase of my career.
Making a Different Choice Gives You the Opportunity to Live a Different Life.
I've often called mothers the greatest spiritual teachers in the world.
What I have learned in my life and work is that the more I am able to be myself, the more it enables other people to be themselves.
If you live in the past and allow the past to define who you are, then you never grow.
The work of your life is to discover your purpose and get on with the business of living it out.
We are not servants of some God; we are 'our own gods?'
This is your moment. Own it.
I believe that when you stop renewing and are no longer open to change and the possibilities that continually unfold, you stop being alive and are just getting through the years. Transformation doesn't happen unless you're willing: It's your choice.
The expectation of my life was that I might be able to work for some good white folks. Now I got some good white folks working for me.
I feel my greatest work is yet to come.
We need to deprogram ourselves. I know for sure that you can't give what you don't have. If you allow yourself to be depleted to the point where your emotional and spiritual tank is empty and you're running on fumes of habit, everybody loses. Especially you.
I have named myself an unofficial ambassador for Australia and I have the biggest mouth on Earth.
Failing is another stepping-stone to greatness.
The reason I so rarely break promises to other people? It breaks trust. Without trust, there's no relationship.
Reading gave me hope.
What least makes a mother is biology.
When you educate a girl, you begin to change the face of a nation.
My father turned my life around insisting I be more than I was and by believing I could be more.
The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much.
When you educate a woman, you set her free. Had I not had books and education in Mississippi, I would have believed that's all there was.
I only got the opportjnity to co-host a talk show because I failed at news.
I've learned to rely on the strength I inherited from all those who came before me-the grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and brothers who were tested with unimaginable hardships and still survived. 'I go forth alone, and stand as ten thousand,' Maya Angelou proclaimed in her poem 'Our Grandmothers.' When I move through the world, I bring all my history with me-all the people who paved the way for me are part of who I am.
We're all here to figure out how to best give ourselves away.
I've learned that every single trial offers us a chance to either turn away from what we know to be true, or to stand strong in who we are...
Don't put a ceiling on yourself.
I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I did it; something really good would happen and I'd miss it.
When you run a race, you hurt your ability to compete when you turn your head to look at the competition chasing you, you lose a step physically and psychologically. Run the race always stretching to do your best, imitations will come in last, no one can catch an original.
Failure is a stepping-stone to greatness.
In the end, all you have is your reputation.
When you learn, teach. When you get, give. Maya Angelou taught me that.
Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.
I did not believe what I was told about being poor and black and female in Mississippi in 1954.
Intent and service-that is my motto.
The chance to love and be loved exists no matter who or where you are.
A gift isn't a gift unless it has meaning. Just giving things to people, especially children, create the expectation of more things.
Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.
This whole celebrity-fame thing is interesting. I'm the same person I always was. The only difference between being famous and not being famous is that people know who you are.
The ultimate comfort zone is within.
Don't worry about being successful. Worry about being significant.
It has become harder and harder to find books on a monthly basis that I feel absolutely compelled to share, .. I will continue featuring books on the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' when I feel they merit my heartfelt recommendation.
Be loving to yourself and others will see that love reciprocated. This rule works every time
I make sure to use my life for that which can be of goodwill. It has fortified me spiritually and emotionally
I've been stopped cold from eating another burger!
You are here to do something you are uniquely created for. No one else can do it like you can, that's why you're here
I am a product of every other black woman before me who has done or said anything worthwhile. Recognizing that I am part of history is what allows me to soar.