Quotes on self-love, confidence, and taking up space to inspire self-care. 

“I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.” – Oprah Winfrey

 

“Our first job in life as women is to get to know ourselves and I think a lot of times we don’t do that. We spend a lot of time pleasing, satisfying, looking out into the world to define who we are. Listening to the messages, the images, the limited definitions that people have of who we are.” – Michelle Obama

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” —Audre Lorde 

 

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

– Alice Walker

 

 

“Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine in yourself, so that you can hear it in others.”– Marian Wright Edelman

 

 “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”– Maya Angelou

 

“You are your best thing.” -Toni Morrison 

 

“You are the designer of your destiny; you are the author of your story.” — Lisa Nichols 

 

“Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any Happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself”–Alice Walker 

 

“I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black; it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.” 

– June Jordan

 

“Your willingness to look at your darkness is what empowers you to change.”— Iyanla Vanzant 

“Even if it makes others uncomfortable, I will love who I am.”

– Janelle Monáe

 

“I just think, as women, we have to give ourselves room to be individuals. So when a woman makes a decision for herself, we as women shouldn’t set those hardcore boundaries for another woman. Just like we don’t want men setting hardcore boundaries for us.”

– Jada Pinkett Smith

 

“Deal with yourself as an individual worthy of respect, and make everyone else deal with you the same way. ” – Nikki Giovanni 

 

“Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.” – Marva Collins 

 

“Whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free . . . your true self comes out.” — Tina Turner 

 

“I’m convinced that we Black women possess a special indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down, but to get up, to get through, and to get over.” — Janet Jackson 

 

“Loving oneself isn’t hard, when you understand who and what ‘yourself’ is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It’s so beyond all of those things and it’s what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure.”

-Phylicia Rashad

 

 “Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.” – Viola Davis 

 

“Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We’ve been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission. I think it’s true for women, and I think it’s true for people of color. It’s historic, and it’s unfortunate and has somehow become part of our DNA. But that time has passed.” –Ava DuVernay

 

“I need to see my own beauty and to continue to be reminded that I am enough, that I am worthy of love without effort, that I am beautiful, that the texture of my hair and that the shape of my curves, the size of my lips, the color of my skin, and the feelings that I have are all worthy and okay.”–Tracee Ellis Ross 

 

“You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.” – Nina Simone 

 

“One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. I wear colors that I really like, I wear makeup that makes me feel pretty, and it really helps. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see.” — Gabourey Sidibe 

 

“When you take care of yourself, you’re a better person for others. When you feel good about yourself, you treat others better.” — Solange  

 

“The advantages of black hair are infinite.”- Issa Rae 

 

“When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.”- Beyonce 

 

“You can’t rely on how you look to sustain you, what sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful is compassion; for yourself and for those around you.” ― Lupita Nyong’o