Famous Maya Angelou Quotations

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"The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education."
by Maya Angelou
"There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it."
by Maya Angelou
"Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations."
by Maya Angelou
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
by Maya Angelou
"Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
by Maya Angelou
"Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits."
by Maya Angelou
"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."
by Maya Angelou
"Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas,"
by Maya Angelou
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
by Maya Angelou
"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!"
by Maya Angelou
"I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer."
by Fred Savage
"I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting' with 'It is here in my heart and mind and memories.'"
by Maya Angelou
"I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."
by Maya Angelou
"I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver."
by Maya Angelou
"I know why the caged bird sings."
by Maya Angelou
"I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time--that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people."
by Maya Angelou
"I�ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life."
by Maya Angelou
"I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision."
by Maya Angelou
"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities."
by Maya Angelou
"If someone tells you who they are, believe them."
by Maya Angelou
"If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers."
by Maya Angelou
"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
by Maya Angelou
"In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine."
by Maya Angelou
"In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric."
by Maya Angelou
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
by Maya Angelou
"Lift up your eyes upon. This day breaking for you. Give birth again. To the dream."
by Maya Angelou
"love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it"
by Maya Angelou
"Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible."
by Maya Angelou
"See, you dont have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then youll do it without thinking."
by Maya Angelou
"See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing if you're for the right thing then you'll do it without thinking."
by Maya Angelou
"Some of us are timid. We think we have something to lose so we don't try for that next hill."
by Maya Angelou
"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."
by Maya Angelou
"The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind."
by Maya Angelou
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
by Maya Angelou
"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."
by Maya Angelou
"To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power."
by Maya Angelou
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
by Maya Angelou
"We really are 15 countries, and it's really remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham -- both are certain they are the real American."
by Maya Angelou
"When you learn, teach. When you get, give."
by Maya Angelou
"While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man."
by Maya Angelou
"Without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues."
by Maya Angelou
"You can't be consistently fair, consistently generous, consistently just, or consistently merciful. You can be anything erratically, but to be that thing time after time after time, you have to have courage."
by Maya Angelou
"You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you."
by Maya Angelou
"You may encounter defeats, but you must not be defeated."
by Maya Angelou
"You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind."
by Maya Angelou
"I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories"
by Maya Angelou
"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."
by Maya Angelou
"At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don"
by Maya Angelou
"All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood."
by Maya Angelou
"Don't bring negative to my door."
by Maya Angelou
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. Wouldn'"
by Maya Angelou
"A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent."
by Maya Angelou
"The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder -- in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."
by Maya Angelou
"I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction In this world was you. I'd touch your features inchly Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost."
by Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
"Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell them, They think I'm telling lies. I say, It's in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me. I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It's the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me. Men themselves have wondered What they see in me. They try so much But they can't touch My inner mystery. When I try to show them They say they still can't see. I say, It's in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me. Now you understand Just why my head's not bowed. I don't shout or jump about Or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing It ought to make you proud. I say, It's in the click of my heels, The bend of my hair, the palm of my hand, The need of my care, 'Cause I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me."
by Maya Angelou
"Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, 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 one as well."
by Maya Angelou
"If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good morning at total strangers."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"...there is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I"
by Maya Angelou
"I believe that every person is born with talent."
by Maya Angelou
"A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
by Maya Angelou
"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."
by Maya Angelou
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
by Maya Angelou
"Determine to live life with flair and laughter."
by Maya Angelou
"A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her."
by Maya Angelou
"A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally."
by Maya Angelou
"Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant."
by Maya Angelou
"Success… Is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it."
by Maya Angelou
"Maya Angelou"
by Anonymous
"The caged bird sings with a fearful trill..."
by Maya Angelou
"Life loves the liver of it."
by Maya Angelou


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