Maya Angelou Quotes
I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.
I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts.
If you happen to fall in love with someone in another race, it's more difficult, because you have to translate yourself.
It's very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years.
Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad.
Courage, I don't think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That's not courage.
My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.
If I'm going to a new country, I try to learn something about the language and the culture, so I don't just go bumbling over things.
I'm a descendant of someone bought and sold, and brought in 1619 in what was to become the United States.
There is a lot of ignorance, and I don't mean intellectual ignorance. I mean people think that if you get something, it will take away from what I have. It's just ignorance.
There's something beautiful about the fact that Obama was not just elected, but elected decisively across racial, and socio-economic and cultural groups and that we all celebrated in his win.
I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.
I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person.
I'm a positive thinker and actor. I look at a glass; a negative person sees the glass and says: too bad it's half empty... I look at the same glass and say: Hallelujah!! It's half full!!!
If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war?
I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked, A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke, When I think about myself.
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.")
A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing.She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself
I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss
I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.
I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom.
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.
On this platform of peace, we can create a languageto translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.Yet I embrace you openly.Ripe with expectancy.
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.
There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
She said, 'No, you learned that you have power - power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
The“b” word and the “n” word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison.
The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.