Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfreyis an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently North America's first and only multi-billionaire black person. Several...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth29 January 1954
CityKosciusko, MS
CountryUnited States of America
Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe
There is a seeded bread that I bring from South Africa. I bring home 10, 20 loaves. I am so bad with this bread. I've literally been in hotels and brought my own: "Please, can you toast this? I have my own bread." They're like, "You have your own bread?" And I'll pull it out!
Anybody pretending to be anything other than who you really are-you will never, ever reach your personal potential.
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.
I try to live in the moment and let that moment carry me to the next great place.
The very first time I had Whitney Houston on my show, however many years ago, I thought, "You are 'the voice.'" You are the voice, that was my name for you.
So, The Color Purple changed my life. It changed everything about my life because, in that moment of praying and letting go, I really understood the principle of surrender. The principle of surrender is that, after you have done all that you can do, and you've done your best and given it your all, you then have to release it to whatever you call God, or don't call God.
I really feel a sense of responsibility first as a creation of a force that I call God, that's bigger than myself. And because I'm black, I feel the responsibility to that. I feel the responsibility to my womanness. But more importantly, I feel a responsibility to my humanness.
One of my purposes is to use the television show as a voice to not only entertain people, as I did in the beginning, but as a source of information, as a source of enlightenment, wherever we can, and also as a source of lifting people up wherever you can.
I believe that education is freedom. It provides the tools to affect one's own destiny.
Many things in life inspire philanthropy, such as your faith in humanity and your belief in the human spirit to overcome.
One of the things that I encourage for anybody who is interested in their own charity or philanthropy is to start from where you are and what has mattered to you.
I can honestly say that I'm not a person who thinks about awards, as much I think about the work itself.
What you want to do is to get to the point where you only do what matters to you. The real goal in life is to become more of who you are, so that you can make the choices that really satisfy who you are and what you want to do.