Quotes 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.
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.
Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
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.
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
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.
I find it interresting 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 commensurate speed.
Life loves the liver of it.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
I believe that every person is born with talent.
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.
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
Nothing will work unless you do.
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
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.
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.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
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 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.
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
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.
See, you dont have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then youll do it without thinking.
