Best quotes by Oprah Winfrey

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:

All CategoriesAbout successAbout focusAbout motivationAbout confidenceAbout being yourselfAbout womanAbout ideasAbout happinessAbout peopleAbout natureAbout dreamsAbout ageAbout timeAbout moneyAbout lifeAbout freedomAbout loveAbout artAbout marriageAbout fearAbout mindAbout New YorkAbout passion

She is the mother I never had, she is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person.

I could eat a feeling faster than anybody, put a little hot sauce on it and wouldn't recognize it until it showed up on my behind three days later.

I think education is power. I think that being able to communicate with people is power. One of my main goals on the planet is to encourage people to empower themselves.

What I know for sure is that behind every catastrophe, there are great lessons to be learned. Among the many that we as a country need to get is that as long as we play the "us and them" game, we don't evolve as people, as a nation, as a planet.

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.

The roses, the lovely notes, the dining and dancing are all welcome and splendid. But when the Godiva is gone, the gift of real love is having someone who'll go the distance with you. Someone who, when the wedding day limo breaks down, is willing to share a seat on the bus.

It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb.

Your life is big. Keep reaching.

I live inside God's dream for me. I don't try to tell God what I'm supposed to do. . . God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.

After all these years, I could say thank you to a woman who had a powerful impact on my early life.

All the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if you don't have time to enjoy it.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Find a way to get paid for doing what you love. Then every paycheck will be a bonus.

If you feel incomplete, you alone must fill yourself with love in all your empty shattered spaces

How do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life.

When you make loving others the story of your life, there's never a final chapter, because the legacy continues. You lend your light to one person, and he or she shines it on another and another and another.

The best way to succeed is to discover what you love and find a way to offer it to others.

Anybody pretending to be anything other than who you really are-you will never, ever reach your personal potential.

I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.

Every choice gives you a chance to pave your own road. Keep moving. Full speed ahead

The surest way to bring goodness to yourself is to make it your intention to do good for somebody else.

What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it.

If you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with the spirit.

All of us need a vision for our lives, and even as we work to achieve that vision, we must surrender to the power that is greater than we know. It's one of the defining principles of my life that I love to share: God can dream a bigger dream for you than you could ever dream for yourself.

My highest achievement: never shutting my heart down. Even in my darkest moments - through sexual abuse, a pregnancy at 14, lies and betrayals - I remained faithful, hopeful, and open to seeing the best in people, regardless of whether they were showing me their worst. I stayed open to believing that no matter how hard the climb, there is always a way to let in a sliver of light to illuminate the path forward.

You become what you believe.

Everyone is the keeper of a dream

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.

I want to continue to encourage as many people as I can to open their hearts to life, because if I know anything for sure, it's that opening my own heart is what has brought me my greatest success and joy.

I was once afraid of people saying, “Who does she think she is?” Now I have the courage to stand and say, “This is who I am.

You are responsible for your life. It doesn't matter what your Mama did. It doesn't matter what your Daddy didn't do. You are responsible for your life.

The greatest lesson of life is that you are responsible for your life.

Life has taught me to just be the best I can be.

I hear people say all the time, "I'm not really religious, but I consider myself spiritual." I definitely have always been spiritual, being raised by my grandmother on that little acre in Mississippi, indoctrinated, born into the church and the ways of the church.

A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.

There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It's why you were born. And how you become most truly alive.

It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

I can't deny that Jerry Springer supposedly beating us didn't affect me. There was a point where I felt like, Golly, you work so hard, you try so hard and the people say they want meaningful television and then Jerry Springer ends up beating you. It was disturbing.

You can't do it all yourself. Don't be afraid to rely on others to help you accomplish your goals.

We often block our own blessings because we don't feel inherently good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or worthy enough... You're worthy because you are born and because you are here. Your being here, your being alive makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough.

I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.

Knowing your deepest intention can be your guiding force in the creation of a better life.

The choices we've made throughout our lives affect whatever happens to us in any given moment.

What dogs? These are my children, little people with fur who make my heart open a little wider.

Nobody but you is responsible for your life. You are responsible for your life. What is your life? What is all life? What is every flower, every rock, every tree? Energy. And you're responsible for the energy you create for yourself, and you're responsible for the energy that you bring to others.

If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.

Don't get confused with what people say you are, with who you know you are.

Trust your instincts. Intuition doesn't lie.

Pray as if it's up to God, work as if it's up to you.

I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.

Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others.

You can't give it to others if you don't have it in yourself.

I trust in the ebb and flow of the universe. I trust that life's bigger than what I can see. I trust that there is a divine order beyond my control. And I trust that no matter what happens, I will be all right.

You can find the sacred in the most ordinary of things.

Would you do your job and not be paid for it? I would do this job, and take on a second job just to make ends meet if nobody paid me. That’s how you know you are doing the right thing.

So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.

Follow your feelings. If it feels right, move forward. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.

Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.

You want to make decisions that are meaningful to you, and that are going to continue to enhance you being who you really are and what your message to the world is, and everybody has one. The real important thing is to know what that message is and how you want to carry that forward.

I am extremely spiritual. I've not gone into this before because it's personal, but faith is the core of my life.

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more.

A lesson will keep repeating itself until it is learned. Life first will send the lesson to you in the size of a pebble; if you ignore the pebble, then life will send you a brick; if you ignore the brick, life will send you a brick wall; if you ignore the brick wall, life will send you a demolition truck.

Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

When you give up on life, never give up on yourself, because there is so much for you to keep on giving!

There's nobody who would be willing to do an interview on a regular basis that you can't go and Google and find out what has happened to them in the past week. There's nobody.

Eating more consciously now feels like a way of being. I actually think about how my food got to my plate.

I don't have a lot of "I can't" inside me.

I don't know what kind of egomaniac is sitting at home thinking about the impact they have had on the culture. It's not something I actually think about until it comes up.

Can you see me? Can you hear me? Does anything I say mean anything to you?

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.

There are so many people who've come before me who deserved to be tired. Who didn't have the opportunities, who didn't have the access, who didn't have the money, who didn't have the influence, who didn't have the voice.

All these years I've been feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown.