Queen Latifah Quotes

When I was younger, I used to just want to please everybody and not want to be an issue or not be considered a diva. I've just grown up and realized you have to look out for yourself and stick up for yourself, and there's nothing wrong with that.

All I know is that it is important to stand up for ourselves, no matter how inconvenient the reality is.

I am not ashamed to say I will speak up to defend myself.

I'm trying to hold my head high and not apologize and be nice all the time because that's not always necessary.

When you learn to say yes to yourself, you will be able to say no to others, with love.

Sticking up for ourselves in the same way we would one of our friends is a hard but satisfying thing to do. Sometimes it works.

Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, 'Just a minute. I'm worth everything, dear.'

Never be bullied into silence.

Stop saying yes out of fear about what others will think about you and say NO out of love for yourself!

And I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of help?"

It was easy to blame other people for treating me in ways I didn't like, but now I was seeing that I was the one at fault. The only way you can be mistreated is by allowing yourself to be mistreated, and that was something I did over and over again. Somehow, I needed to find that glimmer of self-respect, buried deep inside, that would allow me to say: I am never going to let that happen to me again. I needed to learn how to stand up for myself in a different way, but I didn't know how.

I'm careful with my heart. I don't take crap from no one these days. I put my foot down. Being a woman, you deserve heaven and earth.

I have had to learn about saying no.

What modeling taught me at a young age was how to say 'no,' which is something girls - we're not always good at saying 'no.' We want to be nice, and then we forget to look out for ourselves.

You should always stand up for yourself.

You always have to stand up for yourself.

You just have to be able to stand up for yourself. And that's OK.

Here I am.... You get the parts of me you like and also the parts that make you uncomfortable. You have to understand that other people's comfort is no longer my job. I am no longer a flight attendant.

Don?t back down just to keep the peace. Standing up for your beliefs builds self-confidence and self-esteem.

Power comes from who you are, not what you have, and the transformation starts with how you allow others to treat you.

Men will treat you the way you let them. There is no such thing as 'deserving' respect; you get what you demand from people.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

[On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation.

I was 40 before I learned that 'No' was a complete sentence.

There's a lot of power in the word 'no,' and a lot of people, like myself, need to know that.