Quotes About Being Yourself

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These quotes about being yourself will help you determine your own identity and live the life you want for yourself.

How many times each day do you mean to say one thing, and say another instead, because you’re worried about what others might think?

How often do you wake up in the morning with one idea in mind for what you want to accomplish, only to find yourself doing something else because of social pressures or personal anxieties?

No lifetime, no matter how successful, will be truly rewarding or happy if you cannot learn to love yourself and be yourself.

It may seem hard, but great people throughout history who have struggled to find their identities, too. Just as they rose to the challenge, you too can learn how to be yourself.

Be Yourself Quotes

Be yourself, don’t take anything from anyone, and never let them take you alive.

Gerard Way

You’ve got to be yourself, and if you’re not, you’re a phony. It comes shining through if you’re not careful.

Jack Harbaugh

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

Bernard Baruch
Oscar Wilde quote "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken"
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.

Allen Ginsberg

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always be yourself. At the end of the day, that’s all you’ve really got; when you strip everything down, that’s all you’ve got, so always be yourself.

Al Roker

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Maya Angelou

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.

Rita Mae Brown
Karl Maeser quote "Be yourself, but always your better self"
“Be yourself, but always your better self.” – Karl G. Maeser

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Philip Pullman

You are you. Now, isn’t that pleasant?

Dr. Seuss

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

Coco Chanel

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

Judy Garland

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

Mahatma Gandhi
Taylor Swift quote "Just be yourself there is no one better"
“Just be yourself, there is no one better.” – Taylor Swift

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

E.E. Cummings

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

William Shakespeare

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Where’s your will to be weird?

Jim Morrison

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

David Carradine

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

Oscar Wilde

I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.

Steve Maraboli

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

Anton Chekhov

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Homer
Dante quote "Follow your own star!"
“Follow your own star!” – Dante Alighieri

If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?

RuPaul

They can’t scare me if I scare them first.

Lady Gaga

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

Dolly Parton

Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.

Gianni Versace

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.

Balzac

When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

Picasso

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Marilyn Monroe

Don’t let others box you into their idea of what they think you should be. A confined identity is a miserable way to exist. Be you and live free. Trust that in living true to yourself, you will attract people that support and love you, just as you are.

Jaeda deWalt

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

Bono

If you want to be yourself, sometimes you can’t compare the economic benefit with art.

Kelly Liang
"The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere"
“The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Learn to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Benjamin Disraeli

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.

Oscar Wilde

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.

Andre Berthiaume

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

Andre Gide

Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

Janeane Garofalo

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

Angelina Jolie

How many more of us are faking the facade? How many more of us are pretending to be something we’re not? Even better, how many of us will have the courage to be ourselves regardless of what others think?

Katie McGarry
Osho quote "Existence wants you to be you"
“Existence wants you to be you.” – Osho

Follow your heart, listen to your inner voice, stop caring about what others think.

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.

Roy T. Bennett

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

Rita Mae Brown

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

Bruce Lee

You just have to be yourself and go full with confidence and be courageous.

Gabby Douglas

If you can just be yourself, then you have to be original because there’s no one like you.

Marc Newsom

It sounds so simple, but if you just be yourself, you’re different than anyone else.

Tony Bennett

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Bindi Irwin

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

J. B. Priestley

Don’t worry about what the people say; be yourself, say what you want to say with respect.

Mariano Rivera
Chris Collinsworth quote "You can't believe how hard it is to be yourself"
“You can’t believe how hard it is to be yourself.” – Chris Collinsworth

The secret to success is to be yourself.

S. Sreesanth

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

Lao Tzu

Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.

Harvey Fierstein

Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.

Brian Tracy

Never apologize for being yourself.

Paolo Coelho

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

Steve Jobs

You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.

Robert Greene

No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.

Buckminster Fuller

When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.

Epictetus

Don’t believe you have to be like anybody to be somebody.

Nike
"The superior man follows nobody else’s path"
“The superior man follows nobody else’s path.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Don’t let other people decide who you are.

Bob Goff

You change the world by being yourself.

Yoko Ono

Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to you, and stay.

Will Smith

When you see a mob doing something, it should make you less likely to do it yourself, not more likely.

Paul Graham

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

G.K. Chesterton

You, being yourself, unknowingly inspire others to be themselves.

Mooji

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world just wants your authentic truth.

Gabby Bernstein

Large groups are no place for smart people.

Naval Ravikant
Dan Go quote "You eliminate competition by being yourself"
“You eliminate competition by being yourself.” – Dan Go

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

Coco Chanel

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

John F. Kennedy

I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Bertrand Russell

This above all: to thine own self be true.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

Friedrich Nietzsche

They laugh at me because I’m different; I laugh at them because they’re all the same.

Kurt Cobain

I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

Socrates

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

E.E. Cummings
"Conformity gets you nowhere"
“Conformity gets you nowhere.” – Neil Strauss

Appear as you are, be as you appear.

Rumi

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Carl Jung

You want to be uncommon amongst uncommon people. Period.

David Goggins

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

Peter Thiel

Only dead fish go with the flow.

Derek Sivers

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.

Jim Morrison

Don’t dilute yourself for any person or any reason. You are enough! Be unapologetically you.

Steve Mariboli

It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.

Dolly Parton

Consult your conscience; rather than popular opinion.

Pubilius Syrus
"When you are in your own lane there is no traffic"
“When you are in your own lane there is no traffic.” – Ashley France

Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.

Hermann Hesse

Don’t try to impress people. Always be yourself.

Bella Thorne

We hope that these quotes about being yourself have inspired to take your own path.

It’s not always easy to be yourself, but part of that stems from learning to love and respect yourself as you are. These sayings remind us that others have faced that struggle with their self esteem and the judgment of others and won!

Photo of author

Quincy Seale

Quincy is KIM's editor, and has collected and shared inspiring quotes and stories since 2005. Quincy holds an MBA from the University of Dundee and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and lives in San Antonio with his wife Natalie, son Alex, and his dog Oban.

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