Bryant wrote it himself. The sentence sits mid-paragraph in The Mamba Mentality: How I Play (MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), in a short entry headed “KEEP IT REAL,” where he is describing how he stopped managing his image for the press. The popular one-line version is a genuine verbatim extract — it is only the surrounding paragraph that gets dropped.
“No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are” No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are. — Kobe Bryant, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play (New York: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), entry “KEEP IT REAL.” Via Quotle.info
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Kobe Bryant — NBA shooting guard · Los Angeles Lakers, 1996–2016. Theme: "No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
The Mamba Mentality: How I Play
Entry
“KEEP IT REAL”
Published
MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 23 October 2018
Edition
Hardcover, 208 pp., ISBN 978-0-374-20123-4
When I was young, my mindset was image, image, image. I took that approach with the media. As I became more experienced I realized: No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are.
Book excerpt
The paragraph runs on past the famous sentence: Bryant goes on to say that from that point he kept his answers blunt and straightforward, mixed in humour and sarcasm, and believes fans and reporters came to appreciate the real him. Text as transcribed in the sourced entry at Wikiquote; the entry title is recorded there, but no page number.
The line is carried as a sourced quotation on Wikiquote’s Kobe Bryant page ↗, quoted inside its full original paragraph and cited to The Mamba Mentality: How I Play (2018), entry “KEEP IT REAL.” Wikiquote lists no “Misattributed” or “Disputed” section for Bryant, and Quote Investigator has no page on this quote.
The book is Bryant’s own. Kirkus Reviews ↗ records publisher MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, publication on 23 October 2018, 208 pages and ISBN 978-0-374-20123-4, and describes its contents as “short, no-nonsense snippets” — the format the “KEEP IT REAL” passage takes.
One limit worth stating plainly: no library holds a full-text-searchable scan of the book — it is absent from Internet Archive search-inside and from the Open Library record ↗ for the work — so the wording could not be re-checked against a page image. The attribution rests on Wikiquote’s sourced entry, which names the book and the entry within it.
The Mamba Mentality: How I Play was first published on 23 October 2018 by MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, so it is firmly in copyright in the United States — nothing published in 1931 or later is in the public domain here on age alone. The short passage above is reproduced for identification and commentary; rights in the text remain with the publisher and Bryant’s estate.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Context
Why he said it
The sentence is usually posted as free-floating self-help. In the book it is nothing of the kind — it is a working note about handling reporters. Bryant sets it up by admitting that as a young player his mindset was “image, image, image,” and that he carried that approach into press conferences. The line about authenticity is what he concluded once he had been doing it long enough to see that the image management was buying him nothing.
What follows in the same paragraph is the practical consequence rather than the uplift: he says he started keeping his answers blunt and straightforward, mixed in humour and sarcasm, and thinks fans and reporters ended up preferring that. So the quote is advice about media strategy that happens to generalise — not a motivational aphorism that happens to be about the press.
It is a note about press conferences, not a poster.
A note on how this one circulates
Searching the exact wording turns up almost nothing beyond Wikiquote itself and a syndicated “quote of the day” item — which is unusual for a famous-name quote, and a good sign. The lines that get fabricated are the ones that spread everywhere with no origin; this one has a stated origin and comparatively little spread.
The one thing that does go missing in circulation is the source. It is routinely captioned with a bare “— Kobe Bryant,” which invites the assumption that it came from a speech or an interview. It came from a book he wrote, and the book names the passage.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1978–2020 · NBA shooting guard · Los Angeles Lakers, 1996–2016
Kobe Bean Bryant (born Philadelphia, 23 August 1978; died Calabasas, California, 26 January 2020) spent his entire twenty-season NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five championships, the 2008 MVP award and eighteen All-Star selections. After retiring in 2016 he moved into writing and film, winning an Academy Award for the animated short Dear Basketball. The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, published in 2018, was his own account of how he prepared, practised and thought about the game — written in short, blunt entries rather than as a conventional memoir.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Kobe Bryant, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, photographs by Andrew D. Bernstein (New York: MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), entry “KEEP IT REAL.” Text as transcribed in the sourced entry at Wikiquote, which records the entry title but no page number.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-matter-what-people-are-going-to-like-you-or-not-like-you/