Barack Obama Quotes

The thing that surprises me most is, you cannot change who you are.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

I never want to change so much that people can't recognize me.

Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself. That's the hardest thing to find.

Remember who you are. It's really okay to be who you are.

Savor what you are and not what everyone else wants you to be.

Did you get so caught up in the preoccupancy of a relationship that you lost who you were or were busy in life or career that you, like Adam and Eve, got lost in the garden putting fig leaf after fig leaf title, relationship, this accolade, this saying over you that you forgot who you were and what's life's about? So getting back to the core of that and building life by design, that is authentic.

Fundamentally, you can never be someone else. You can only be less of who you are.

You can't try to be somebody you're not; that's not style. If someone says, 'Buy this - you'll be stylish,' you won't be stylish because you won't be you. You have to learn who you are first, and that's painful.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

What is interesting about me isn't that I am a mother, it is who I am. I love my family, but if I just talk to you about being a mother, it's boring. I am sorry, but it's reducing who I really am, and it's really boring.

Keep your sense of self; don't get caught up in what people want you to be.

It is when I am working that the real me comes out - that is when I am the most real and honest.

We get so swept up in sort of what the media tells us to care about and all these other influences that we really have to dig down deep and figure out what is it that we as human beings really care about and want for ourselves. When you figure that out, you see who you really are.

Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

You're an island no matter what you do. I think it's very dangerous to use popularity as your identity in life. So you have to really know who you are inside, the core person, and follow what is true rather than follow what is hype.

What we must try to be, of course, is ourselves and wholeheartedly. We must find out what we really are and what we really want.

Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.

I want to stop transforming and just start being.

I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

I always want to stay focused on who I am, even as I'm discovering who I am.