Soledad O’Brien quotes: the broadcaster’s best content.
“People will say you can’t do good and do well. They’re wrong, that’s idiotic advice.”
“When you change your focus to your purpose, you stop worrying about how much money you’re going to make and your job title because those things to some degree are irrelevant if you don’t love your work.”
“Don’t listen to advice, listen to stories. If you listen to bad advice, you’re the bigger fool.”
“Step out of the space you’re in. Use fear to grow. We can change lives, starting with our own.”
“I’ve learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom… how great is that?”
“There are moments of failure in your life you can learn from and fail forward. It’s about failing and learning lessons.”
“I constantly tell people, if this really terrible thing does happen to you sometimes, you’re not really positioned to take the next good thing that comes your way. It’s hard to think of that when it’s happening but I think most of us in this room would think about things that ended badly that opened the door for something interesting.”
“I think it gives you a lot of leverage to do the things that you want to do.”
“Always zig when people expect you to zag. Confound them!”
“People will say you cannot get a job in a down economy. People will say you cannot get a job that you love that will pay you well. People will tell you that you cannot change the world. They’re wrong.”
“When we feel pressured to have achieved certain things by a particular age, it could ultimately hinder us. It’s great to have goals but those specific benchmarks can easily become irrelevant once you ask yourself, ‘Where am I having the most impact?'”
“Most people’s path is not, ‘I started here, and it all went smoothly from there.’ The way it usually works is it doesn’t work perfectly all the time.”
“You just have to do quality work. You have to kind of tune out all the data and the stats you know to be true because you’ll lose your mind. You can’t go into everything saying, ‘Oh, well, there’s no one here who looks like me’ or ‘I’m not really represented.’ You have to define what you want to cover, and then go do the best job you possibly can.”
“Being an entrepreneur is a mindset. You have to see things as opportunities all the time. I like to do interviews. I like to push people on certain topics. I like to dig into the stories where there’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer.”
“Be fearless in searching for the truth. Go up to people and talk to them about the truth of their lives and their experience, and then fight for those things to get to a platform.”
“We as human beings are terrible listeners. You realize that you can go into a conversation with just one question… because if you do it right you can elicit something that brings you to the next interesting question. That’s good listening.”
“Try to hear people, especially in this environment where we live in an information bubble. Try to really listen.”
“Get comfortable with awkward silences.”
“If you don’t have something relevant and helpful to say, consider taking a step back.”
“My advice to young women who are looking to be successful? Make sure you’re passionate about whatever it is that you’re doing. And make sure you’re fulfilled by the opportunities within your job.”
“If I would’ve listened to people, I would’ve been on a great platform, but I wouldn’t have grown as a journalist. So far, most of the steps in my career have been really good.”
“There are thousands of inspirational stories waiting to be told about young women who yearn for a great education. They are stories of struggle and stories of success, and they will inspire others to take action and work to change lives.”
“If you can tell a story well, you can move people to do something.”
“Stories are more than compelling facts. People remember stories more than they remember statistics.”
“Stories, as we’re taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone’s culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.”
“I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions, and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.”
“Morning TV is about habits. What you really need is for viewers to find you, get comfortable with you, make you part of their mornings. If you can make news, deliver things they value, you can be successful.”
“It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about what’s too much, what’s enough, or if you’re telling the right stories. Just do good work.”
“There is nothing worse than doing nothing and saying nothing when your voice is needed.”
“I’m a big believer that there’s more power in numbers and the more you can expand the stories that are relevant to both communities, the better.”
“Don’t worry about the chatter, do a good job, produce great work and do reporting that you’re proud of.”
“I think of myself as a journalist and a storyteller.”
“I covered Katrina, I’ve covered the tsunamis, all of them, the Haiti earthquake… you get to a certain point in your career where you say, ‘I want to now cover what I want to cover.’”
“What I think is great style advice that people have told me is that people who are confident look beautiful. No matter what they’re wearing, no matter if they’re inappropriately dressed, no matter if their hair’s not really done right.”
“I’ve never taken fashion too seriously. I try to enjoy it.”
“A smart politician needs to come in and create a plan for when our students graduate college. There are opportunities in fields that interest them and a job that’s a career. A president whose plans can embrace and incorporate every millennial… will be successful.”
“Kids who are middle class, socioeconomically, are surrounded by mentors. They have coaches, teachers, they have family friends, their parents have friends. They might have opportunities, they might have jobs that allow them to experience things that kids in poverty often don’t have. Sometimes they come from dysfunctional families. And when you come from a family where money’s a real challenge, then it might not be a priority to get you into a summer internship.”
“I grew up in a family of educators. My dad was a professor, my mom was a high school grammar and French teacher… so certainly my entire life education was stressed as incredibly important. And I think especially for my parents, who are both immigrants, and when immigrants come to this country, they understand that education is something that no one can take from them. You might leave the country with absolutely nothing, but no one can take your education from you.”
“You try to expose kids to stuff. We are exposing you to culture. But that’s why we do it, right? Because we want our children to be exposed so that when they go places, they say, ‘I, I’ve been to… I’ve, I’ve seen that.'”
“Education is a great opportunity and a sense of, listen if you come somewhere and there’s a good opportunity, take it, take it.”
“One thing that’s certain: around the corner from every ugly thing, there’s something really beautiful. If we stop at every bitter interaction, we’ll never reach our destination.”
“As I tell people all the time, God is in the details. The details are what will bring a person to life. For me, the data points have always been critical. We’ve always undergirded our work with data to give context and help build understanding.”
“Having people who know you well helps you stay grounded and gives perspective to whatever momentary drama you’re going through.”
“As you head out into the world to jobs and new experiences and more education, never forget that your purpose is to serve. We’re counting on you. No pressure.”
Related: Pat Robertson quotes.
