Quotes By Maya Angelou

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

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

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

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

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

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.

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 believe that every person is born with talent.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

All great achievements require time.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.