60 Self-Esteem Quotes

In a world where we often face challenges and seek validation from external sources, nurturing our self-esteem becomes vital. It's the cornerstone of our mental well-being, influencing how we perceive ourselves and how we interact with others. Whether you're looking for a quick boost or a deeper sense of self-worth, quotes can serve as powerful reminders of your inherent value and strength. We've curated a collection of the top 60 self-esteem quotes to inspire and empower you on your journey towards greater self-love and confidence. Dive in and let these words of wisdom uplift your spirit and reinforce the beauty within you.

1. “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” - LOUISE L. HAY

2. “I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't.” - Marilyn Vos Savant

3. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” - Charlotte Brontë

4. “Sicher gibt es kein größeres Geschenk für einen Menschen als das, was all seine Ziele zu brennenden Lippen und alles Leben zu einem Brunnen macht.” - Khalil Gibran

5. “As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are - what others say is irrelevant.” - Nic Sheff

6. “Your value is in your individuality.” - Dorla Jenkins

7. “I've always been told my presence brightened up any room. One might think that went doubly for dank underground cell." (Jace)” - Cassandra Clare

8. “Don't belittle yourself. Be BIG yourself.” - Corita Kent

9. “Many Christians... find themselves defeated by the most psychological weapon that Satan uses against them. This weapon has the effectiveness of a deadly missile. Its name? Low self-esteem. Satan's greatest psychological weapon is a gut level feeling of inferiority, inadequacy, and low self-worth This feeling shackles many Christians, in spite of wonderful spiritual experiences and knowledge of God's Word. Although they understand their position as sons and daughters of God, they are tied up in knots, bound by a terrible feeling inferiority, and chained to a deep sense of worthlessness.” - David Seamands

10. “Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have...undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt. So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

11. “Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.” - George Santayana

12. “Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.” - Martha Gellhorn

13. “When our feet talk to us, we listen.” - Alexander Nestoiter

14. “Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.” - Shannon Alder

15. “A good self-esteem level is mostly dependant on how we value ourselves without any bias.” - Stephen Richards

16. “If we can acquire an attitude of self-belief, then we will surely determine our future actions and our future life opportunities.” - Stephen Richards

17. “I’m ALL about the Alternative.” - Solange nicole

18. “Stagnation is self-abdication.” - Ryan Talbot

19. “There's always this one girl. She's desperate and she's weird and she's jealous, and you're stuck with her, no matter how hard you try to get her off your back. Just throw some really fucked-up self-esteem issues into the mix and you have Kara.” - Courtney Summers

20. “Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.” - Lucille Ball

21. “Never shall a young man,Thrown into despairBy those great honey-colouredRamparts at your ear,Love you for yourself aloneAnd not your yellow hair.” - W.B. Yeats

22. “Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.” - Naomi Wolf

23. “Eating is not a crime. It’s not a moral issue. It’s normal. It’s enjoyable. It just is.” - Carrie Arnold

24. “As soon as a woman's primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace where the old ones had lost their hold over newly liberated women.” - Naomi Wolf

25. “The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.” - Naomi Wolf

26. “We survey lush landscapes with variations not dissimilar to a so-called "imperfect" female body with absolute pleasure -- say, an expanse of Irish countryside with grassy rolling hills. But is it really so much uglier when it's made of flesh instead of soil?” - Kim Brittingham

27. “Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves.” - Naomi Wolf

28. “The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence "You're beautiful," which is next to "I love you" in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is destined to be unhappy. And the "luckiest" woman of all, told she is loved because she's "beautiful," is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.” - Naomi Wolf

29. “Love me or hate me, i swear it won't make or break me.” - Lil Wayne

30. “Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.” - Naomi Wolf

31. “The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.” - Naomi Wolf

32. “Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life.Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist; The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage, its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.” - Naomi Wolf

33. “In spite of hopes to the contrary, pornography and mass culture are working to collapse sexuality with rape, reinforcing the patterns of male dominance and female submission so that many young people believe this is simply the way sex it. This means that many of the rapists of the future will believe they are behaving within socially accepted norms.” - Susan G. Cole

34. “Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice.” - Naomi Wolf

35. “Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.” - Naomi Wolf

36. “I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in the regard to all the for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as I’ve told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferiority–like tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partner–it was hard for me not to think that, with a little time and practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree.” - Albert Camus

37. “The secret to life is to have no fear. When you can let go of what others think about you, how something is going to turn out, or how your past will affect your future, then you are finally living life free.” - Shannon L. Alder

38. “You know men. We have delicate egos.""I wouldn't describe Jace's ego as delicate.""No, Jace is sort of the antiaircraft artillery tank of male egos," Simon admitted.” - Cassandra Clare

39. “Respect is a really powerful magic too, you know.” - Jefferson Smith

40. “Beliefs that are good promote your potential and enhance your unique special qualities.” - Deborah Day

41. “True beauty radiates not from outer cosmetics, but from the simple joy of making a difference for those that need your voice, passion, and time without expecting or wanting anything in return...” - Deborah Barnes

42. “Image is everything, self image that is.” - Rob Liano

43. “I naively believe that self-love is 80 percent of the solution, that it helps beyond words to take yourself through the day as you would with your most beloved mental-patient relative, with great humor and lots of small treats.” - Anne Lamott

44. “Life is like a game of chess.To win you have to make a move.Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHTand knowledge, and by learning the lessons that areacculated along the way.We become each and every piece within the game called life!” - Allan Rufus

45. “Believe in yourself. Under-confidence leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that you are not good enough for your work.” - Dr Roopleen

46. “I remembered learning from my favorite professor at Belmont to “surround yourself with people who are better than you,” and I was now living that mantra.” - Kimberly Novosel

47. “I dont care who you are I know who I am” - Sandra Cameroun

48. “When I first went to kindergarten kids asked me what I was. I did not understand-I'm a person. They explained that I look a little different and it is not as easy to tell which color I am. -Janelle from Who I Am Not What I Am, Tara Michener” - Tara Michener

49. “There's something AMAZING about you. You owe it to yourself to fulfill your destiny. You were put on earth for a reason. Don't betray yourself because of other people opinions of who you should be. God has already implanted within you who you MEANT to be. Trust your gut instincts.” - Yvonne Pierre

50. “How far can you go in life if you don't love yourself?” - Sean King

51. “It's all me. I'm not just one flavor. You're not, either. So it all comes down to which 'you' you want to show the world.” - Cyn Balog

52. “If you feel unwanted or unappreciated where you are or by those you're with, it only means you're in the wrong place or with the wrong people. Hang in there. Someone else will see you for the true gift you are.” - LK Hunsaker

53. “Mamma says if we stay so focused on our past failings, we won't be able to move beyond them and learn what we need to know.” - Annette Bridges

54. “Sometimes people with low self-esteem will try to punish you for caring about them.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

55. “When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me."That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.” - Augusten Burroughs

56. “As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No- if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes- if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value, only man’s fight against suffering is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim – is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made.” - Ayn Rand

57. “Appreciate the things and people in your life while remaining independent of them. Give thanks for them, but realize that they do not complete you. Only you can complete you.” - Serenity Rey

58. “Confidence is a life ingredient that is essential to success and wholeness. It is perhaps the single most important trait that enables seemingly average people to do and become all that they can. And the good news is – it can be learned. No one has to suffer a lifetime of low confidence.” - Steve Goodier

59. “Looking outside of yourself for love and acceptance, leaves your happiness in the hands of others.” - Debra Beck

60. “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to your body, you’d have no friends left at all.” - Marcia Hutchinson