Oprah Winfrey Quotes

If you feel rooted in your home and family, if you're active in your community, there's nothing more empowering. The best way to make a difference in the world is to start by making a difference in your own life.

How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!

If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.

Most of the time we do nothing, myself included, I think the lesson I learned from [playing humanitarian Tessa in The Constant Gardner] is that a lot of drops make up an ocean. If people would stand up and say what they believe in maybe we can make a difference. Helping one person is better than nothing. Just do something.

Each one of us should lead a life stirring enough to start a movement.

I want to be the best role model I can be for my family.

Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what's happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife - I urge every American - to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people, and to bring peace to our land.

The world will not change until we do

We've somehow allowed ourselves to think it's okay to neglect and abandon our responsibility to ourselves and to our community. Everything cannot be blamed on the system.

That's what everyone thinks--they think being a cop is about punishing people for doing wrong. But that's not true. You know it isn't. It's about believing in people, believing in the good. In the will of people to do what's right despite their own instincts.

[Being role model ]is good for me mentally, selfishly, and it's also nice to try to do that for, especially, younger women. I mean, it's scary as hell. ... I worry about it, but I think it's a good thing to try to do.

Make a difference no matter what role you play

If you inspire one person each day, you’re day hasn't been a waste. It’s been a blessing.

Vegetarianism is a link to perfection and peace. But it's a small link. There are lots of other issues: apartheid , vivisection, political prisoners, the arms race. There's so much going on in this world today, so much ignorance among people. That's not to say I'm not standing amongst everybody. But the point is, what can we do now? That's the thing about vegetarianism; it's an individual's decision and it's something you have control over. How many things do we really have control over?

My hope is that when someone has that call to action, they realize that everybody can do something, even if that's just changing their own thinking. Women have to change the way they think, too. Not just men.

and half of learning to play is learning what not to play and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people

If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one's actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.

If you love your community, then you need to be insisting on justice in all circumstances.

Every new day begins with possibilities. It's up to us to fill it with the things that move us toward progress and peace.

Be the first to seek to bring good, do not grow accustomed to evil, but defeat it.

I don't care about convincing the people who think I'm naive or an idiot. I'm interested in how do I inspire the people who are open-minded that there's a different way of seeing the world.

When faced with world problems - like hunger, overpopulation, nuclear weapons, the arms trade - you may be among those who are overwhelmed by a feeling of "Help! What on earth can I, just one person, do about this?" Take heart. That's a sane response. It's the basis for a whole new attitude to world problems, where change at the level of the individual is more and more recognised as essential to change in huge world systems.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.