Maya Angelou Quotes

I'm grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody.

Have a purpose to your life: Purpose does not mean having a job...You can have a job and still be unfulfilled.

I know something better is on the road for me.

Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody's clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.

Inscribed on the temple of Apollo

When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise.

Take a month and show some kindness for the folks who thought that blindness was an illness that affected eyes alone.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.

I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'

I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.'

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

My mother raised me, and then freed me.

Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross

There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.

I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year.

You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it.

I have heard it said that winter, too, will pass, that spring is a sign that summer is due at last. See, all we have to do is hang on.

Through the centuries, we faced down death by daring to hope.

You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.

Your life is much more important that you can imagine... it is your first treasure.

One must learn to care for oneself first, so that one can then dare to care for someone else.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, without it, you can practice no other.

Hope is born again in the faces of children.

It's a wonderful thing to know that there is something to know there is something greater than I am, and that is God itself.

But from a distance. I would have left you whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less.

The children to whom we read simple stories may or may not show gratitude, but each boon we give strengthens the pillars of the world.

There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

Still, when it looked like the sun wasn't going to shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.

People are too busy putting things under microscopes and so forth. Creativity is greater than the sum of its parts.

I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name.

To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty.

Some of us are timid. We think we have something to lose so we don't try for that next hill.

They who have health have hope; and they who have hope, have everything.

Having courage does not mean we are unafraid.

To make a difference is not a matter of accident...People CHOOSE to make a difference.

We have it in us to be splendid.

I think I know that I deserve better. And so I try for better. I'm never so put off that I would ever walk out of a place not having tried the best I could.

Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised.

The nice thing about HOPE is that you can give it to someone else, someone who needs it even more than you do, and you will find you have not given yours away at all.

In a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all.

Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.