Oprah Winfrey Quotes

I want an identity outside of my work.

Life's too short to be shoehorned into a box that isn't for you.

Figure out who you are separate from your family, and the man or woman you're in a relationship with. Find who you are in this world and what you need to feel good alone. I think that's the most important thing in life. Find a sense of self because with that, you can do anything else.

Being happy is not all about love! Love is not everything. Work, friends, and achieving things... your finite thing in life can't be getting married and having children. Like, creating a life for myself that's my own, and my own road? That was always the most important thing for me. Right now, I have a kid and stuff, and it's fantastic to be a mother, but it's not the final thing. You want to stay an individual. You need to stay an individual for your kid, as an example of what a human being should be! You want to stay true to yourself and not become a half a person. That is so, so important.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.

A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others.

I don't feel like I need to be a successor to my mother, or her work.

I never set out to be rich and famous. I wanted to follow my own path.

I just live my life.

I don't belong to anyone else but myself. I have to make my own decisions. Happiness is defined by me.

I'm my own person. You can't generalise about people.

When you're the most successful person in your family, in your neighborhood, and in your town, everybody thinks you're the First National Bank, and you have to figure out for yourself where those boundaries are.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies' books, because I didn't want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role - very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

It was very important to me that I be my own person. That's why I chose show business.

I think what my 42 years of life has given me is just how important it is to live your own life.

It's cool to step away for a second and be my own person other than just somebody in a known family.

I've lived my whole life in the life - I've lived my whole life doing the thing, I've been doing my own thing. And I think my life speaks volumes about what one must do.

I've always wanted to be my own person. Even when I was 'Noah who rode horses,' I wanted to be Noah Cyrus, not anyone else or a family member.

I've always been very clear: I never want to be known just as somebody's girlfriend.

I have lived life enough to know that I define myself.

One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself. and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position.

Neither of us are workaholics. I think the key thing is to accept that if you only exist through what you do, then you become what you do, and this is very wrong.

I do so hate to be forced to be anything than other than what I am.

No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.