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
Janie, to me, represents awareness of self and becoming a whole person, ... I used to be one of those women who was afraid of being full of herself. Because growing up, and even in elementary school, people would say, 'Oh, she thinks she's so full of herself.'
When it comes to what happened, and didn't have to happen, to children, it's pretty overwhelming, ... It makes me so mad. This makes me mad! This should not have happened.
We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
For the most part, this is really about my friends.
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.