Maya Angelou Quotes

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.

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.

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.

The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?

We write for the same reason that we walk , talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

...one can never leave home...one carries the shadows, the dreams, the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes...

That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.

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.

When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

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.

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

Lovers think quite different thoughtswhile lying side by side.

I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.

Alone"Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don’t believe I’m wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.There are some millionairesWith money they can’t useTheir wives run round like bansheesTheir children sing the bluesThey’ve got expensive doctorsTo cure their hearts of stone.But nobodyNo, nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.Now if you listen closelyI’ll tell you what I knowStorm clouds are gatheringThe wind is gonna blowThe race of man is sufferingAnd I can hear the moan,‘Cause nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens....loudly screamed....Trying to change our nightmares into dreams...

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

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.

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.

This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone.

And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

A certain person wondered whya big strong girl like mewouldn't keep a jobwhich paid a normal salary.I took my time to lead herand to read her every page.Even minimal peoplecan't survive on minimal wage.A certain person wondered whyI wait all week for you.I didn't have the wordsto describe just what you do.I said you had the motionof the ocean in your walk,and when you solve my riddlesyou don't even have to talk.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep

You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother - yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.

When I am 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. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.

I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself.

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

Frequently, I have been asked how I got to be this way. How did I, born black in a white country, poor in a society where wealth is adored and sought after at all costs, female in an environment where only large ships and some engines are described favourably by using the female pronoun-how did I get to be Maya Angelou?

Don't let the man bring you down.

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.