Quote Of The Day By Oprah Winfrey: 'The Answers Keep Unfolding As Your Life Expands...'

It's hard to imagine a time when Oprah Winfrey wasn't a highly respected media mogul. Winfrey has achieved lasting success and is reaping the benefits, with an incredibly lavish lifestyle and a significant net worth of over $3 billion. Along the way, she's managed to maintain much of the helpful wisdom that first made her famous.

Born in Mississippi in 1954, Winfrey dealt with significant hardships in her early years, including a teen pregnancy. Most of the world didn't become familiar with her until the mid-1980s, when she premiered her eponymous talk show in 1986, one year after appearing in "The Color Purple." The film was Winfrey's acting debut, and she earned an Oscar nomination for her work — quite an impressive feat. "I'd never been to a movie set," Winfrey recalled to People in 2023. "It's as big a miracle as my whole life has been, because I didn't know one single soul in the business."

Even more impressive is the fact that Winfrey's entry into talk shows was also pure chance. She got her start in TV news and was quickly promoted. However, as time went on, Winfrey realized that this career didn't quite fit; as she put it during a conversation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, "I started listening to what felt like the truth for me." As a result, she eventually found herself in a talk show environment for the first time, and it felt like home. In discovering her perfect role, the TV host learned some key lessons about life and opportunity, and that's why Oprah Winfrey is today's quote of the day.

After decades of talking to people from all walks of life on her talk show, Oprah Winfrey has more than learned the importance of having an open mind. "The answers keep unfolding as your life expands, if you're willing to see things for what they are — and what they can be," Winfrey wrote in the September 2018 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine.

In the article, Winfrey ruminated on how to take a measured approach to life's difficulties by patiently staying attuned to the machinations of happenstance and maintaining a willingness to embrace different perspectives. As she wrote in the article, her favorite words to hear in a conversation were, "I never thought of it that way before." As such, this quote is also full of hope, since it recognizes that we're all on a journey and new opportunities are always waiting in the wings, even if the immediate path doesn't always make sense.

Oprah Winfrey has been candid that her tendency to lead with empathy was a barrier in news reporting. However, that same trait makes her a powerhouse as a talk show interviewer. Unfortunately, back when Winfrey was in the news, she often had people telling her she'd already reached the limits of her profession. Even after she discovered her talent as a talk show host, naysayers could have held her back when she was contemplating a move to Chicago. Winfrey was willing to take the leap, though, and she became internationally known in the process. "All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me," Winfrey explained to the aforementioned Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2014.

The second part of Winfrey's quote, the idea of seeing things for "what they can be," also plays into this idea of taking chances. In 2011, Winfrey walked away from her massively successful talk show. Even though some people thought Winfrey was making a foolhardy decision, she was confident about her choice. 

Winfrey next challenged herself by running the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and even though it seemed insurmountably difficult at first, she channeled her resilience. "All these years I've been telling people to hang in there," Oprah recalled to Andy Cohen in 2013 (via Deadline). "I went, 'Oh, now I get to walk that walk, and not just talk it.'" 

• "Look inward — the loving begins with you."
• "Whatever your reason for holding on to resentments, I know this for sure: There is none worth the price you pay in lost time."
• "I think life starts at 44, because you come into yourself in a way that you're no longer trying to please everybody else. You come into yourself."
• "Failure is another steppingstone to greatness."
• "Your entire life is a class and every choice and thought you've ever made is a part of a life lesson that is your class here on earth."