Empowering Quotes That Inspire You to Be Yourself

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."

- Albert Einstein

"What other people think of me is none of my business."

- Wayne Dyer

"I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all."

- Coco Chanel

"Just keep moving forward and don’t give a s**t about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you."

- Johnny Depp

"There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do."

- Marianne Williamson

"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing."

- Richard P. Feynman

"Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it."

- Tina Fey

"Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner."

- Lao Tzu

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life."

- Steve Jobs

"The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."

- Virginia Woolf

"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Never dull your shine for somebody else."

- Tyra Banks

"I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself."

- Michel de Montaigne

"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will."

- Karim Seddiki

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

- Oscar Wilde

"Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what."

- Erma Bombeck

"Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you."

- Cynthia Kersey

"When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I’m already better than them."

- Marilyn Monroe

"You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."

- Olin Miller

"So many people along the way, whatever it is you aspire to do, will tell you it can’t be done. But it all it takes is imagination. You dream. You plan. You reach."

- Michael Phelps

"My dear, I don’t give a damn."

- Margaret Mitchell

"Self respect, self worth and self love, all start with self. Stop looking outside of yourself for your value."

- Rob Liano

"I’ve finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be?"

- Goldie Hawn

"You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do."

- David Foster Wallace

"Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else."

- Judy Garland

"People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not."

- Wayne Gerard Trotman

"If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it."

- John Lennon

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are."

- Kurt Cobain

"You are not what others think you are. You are what God knows you are."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Imitation is suicide."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No name-calling truly bites deep unless, in some dark part of us, we believe it. If we are confident enough then it is just noise."

- Laurell K. Hamilton

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

- Charlotte Brontë

"I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things."

- Amy Poehler

"A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up."

- Mae West

"There is nothing more attractive than confidence, once she sees her own beauty, everyone else will."

- Habeeb Akande

"Most people just want to see you fall, that’s more reason to stand tall."

- Emma Michelle

"Being yourself is one of the hardest things because it’s scary. You always wonder whether you’ll be accepted for who you really are. I decided to call my record ‘Inside Out’ because that’s my motto about life. I don’t think you ever succeed at trying to be anyone else but who you truly are."

- Emmy Rossum

"Some people say you are going the wrong way, when it’s simply a way of your own."

- Angelina Jolie

"The best thing you can do is get very good at being you."

- Dennis the Menace

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves."

- La Rouchefoucauld

"Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone."

- Tina Fey

"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."

- Aristotle

"When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific."

- Lily Tomlin

"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself."

- Rita Mae Brown

"Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Well, laddie, if you’ve let an old buzzard like me hurt your confidence, you couldn’t have had much in the first place."

- Tamora Pierce

"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."

- Sigmund Freud

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."