Quotes By Maya Angelou

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Nothing will work unless you do.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

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

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

All great achievements require time.

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.

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

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

I believe that every person is born with talent.