1. "This above all: to thine own self be true"
- William Shakespeare
- William Shakespeare
2. "There is only one you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself."
- Anthony Rapp
3. "Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?"
- Charles Bukowski
4. "'Finding yourself' is not really how it works. You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. 'Finding yourself' is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you."
- Emily McDowell
5. "You don't need a mirror to find your authentic self; you only need to stop trying to be anything, and simply just be. You become your
authentic self by letting go of who you think you should be."
- Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.
6. "Authenticity is when you say and do the things you actually believe."
- Simon Sinek
7. "You are who you are when nobody’s watching."
- Stephen Fry
8. "A person who suppresses his or her own self is in danger of missing the point of his or her own existence, of surrendering what being human means."
- Byron L. Sherwin
9. "Only when we stop pretending to be something we are not - when we no longer feel the need to hide or overcompensate for either our weaknesses or our gifts - will we know the freedom of expressing our authentic self and have the ability to make choices that are based on the life we truly desire to live.”
- Debbie Ford
10. "Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love."
- Rumi
11. "By being yourself, you put something beautiful into the world that was not there before."
- Edwin Elliot
12. "Existence wants you to be you."
- Osho
13. "Let's dare to be ourselves, for we do that better than anyone else can."
- Shirley Briggs
14. "The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you."
- Neil Gaiman
15. "Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you."
- Eckhart Tolle
16. "Be yourself to free yourself!"
- G. Brian Benson
17. "I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing."
- Alicia Keys
18. "Anyone who really loves you wants you to be authentic. And anyone who doesn't want you to be authentic doesn't really love you."
- Nathaniel Branden
19. "Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance."
- Brené Brown
20. "But who can love me, if no one knows me?"
- Sheldon Kopp
21. "Being honest may not get you many friends, but it’ll always get you the right ones."
- John Lennon
22. "Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet - thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing - consistently."
- Lance Secretan
23. "Try not to be too focused on pleasing others and end up losing your true self."
- Edmond Mbiaka
24. "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. "The superior man follows nobody else’s path."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
26. "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
27. "There is only one you. And there will never be another one. That’s your power."
- Mel Robbins
28. "Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."
- Bruce Lee
29. "Self-improvement isn't about trying to become someone you're not; it's about becoming the best version of yourself."
- T. H. Russo
30. "It doesn’t matter what everyone else is wearing or eating or watching or buying. Be yourself."
- Joshua Becker
31. "Always be you, never be someone else; don't pretend to like something that you don't; don't consider anyone a friend who you can't be yourself around; live your life as who you are not who you think others want you to be like."
- Catherine Pulsifer
32. "Life can't work for you if you don't show up as you."
- Jason Mraz
33. "When you dance to your own rhythm, life taps its toes to your beat."
- Terri Guillemets
34. "You know how every once in a while you do something and the little voice inside says, ‘There. That's it. That's why you're here.’ … and you get a warm glow in your heart because you know it's true? Do more of that."
- Jacob Nordby
35. "Learn to… be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
36. "Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."
- Malcolm S. Forbes
37. "Understand: you are one of a kind. Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history. There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses. You must not be afraid of your uniqueness."
- Robert Greene
38. "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you."
- Dr. Seuss
39. "No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else."
- P.T. Barnum
40. "Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."
- John Stuart Mill