Maya Angelou Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Maya Angelou Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
I believe that every person is born with talent.— Maya Angelou
Don't do anything that you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life.— Maya Angelou
God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments - can see a possibility of hope.— Maya Angelou
Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.— Maya Angelou
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.— Maya Angelou
Dr. [Martin Luther] King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which was wonderful.— Maya Angelou
![Maya Angelou Sayings By Maya Angelou: Dr. [Martin Luther] King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/maya-angelou-sayings-by-maya-angelou-43284.jpg "Maya Angelou Sayings By Maya Angelou: Dr. [Martin Luther] King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which")
My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.— Maya Angelou
The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.— Maya Angelou
I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous - that is to say, it's obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.— Maya Angelou
We saw beyond our seeming— Maya Angelou
These days of bloodied screaming
Of children dying bloated
Out where the lilies floated
Of men all noosed and dangling
Within the temples strangling
Our guilt grey fungus growing
We knew and lied our knowing
Deafened and unwilling
We aided in the killing
And now our souls lie broken
Dry tablets without token.
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.— Maya Angelou
I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.— Maya Angelou
We can only know where we're going if we know where we've been.— Maya Angelou
It is the worst thing you can do, women, is whine, .. I mean the worst. Don't complain, protest.— Maya Angelou
I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.— Maya Angelou
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.— Maya Angelou
I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.— Maya Angelou
I am a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman that is your grandmother, that is your mother, that is your sister, that is you and that is me.— Maya Angelou
Thank you so much for supporting me from the day I stepped foot into the music industry. It really means something to me to have Maya Angelou speak on my behalf. It also means a lot to have Oprah on my speed dial!— Mary J. Blige
This bed yawns— Maya Angelou
beneath the weight
of our absent selves.
One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority.— Maya Angelou
One must learn to care for oneself first, so that one can then dare to care for someone else.— Maya Angelou
Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I'll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you'll have to say, "Stop here until your mom comes here." Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.— Maya Angelou
People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant.— Maya Angelou
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.— Maya Angelou
If God put the rainbows right in the clouds themselves, each one of us in the direst and dullest and most dreaded and dreary moments can see a possibility of hope ... Each one of us has the chance to be a rainbow in somebody's cloud.— Maya Angelou
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region's only enfranchised citizen.— Maya Angelou
I'm very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick.— Maya Angelou
I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.— Maya Angelou
I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.— Maya Angelou
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.— Maya Angelou
It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.— Maya Angelou
I've learned, I still have a lot to learn— Maya Angelou
In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.— Maya Angelou
I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.— Maya Angelou
When women take care of their health they become their own best friend.— Maya Angelou
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape— Maya Angelou
It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.— Maya Angelou
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.— Maya Angelou
I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!— Maya Angelou
The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.— Maya Angelou
I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.— Maya Angelou
People don't always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you make them feel.— Maya Angelou
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends? The— Maya Angelou
Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.— Maya Angelou
Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.— Maya Angelou
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats ...— Maya Angelou
I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.— Maya Angelou
This conference ? of, for and about women ? is, in itself, a rainbow in the clouds. When numerous women come together and show that they care, not only for themselves but also for each other, that is the occasion when a rainbow is shining down on somebody else.— Maya Angelou
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.— Maya Angelou
Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.— Maya Angelou
Faith is the evidence of the unseen.— Maya Angelou
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.— Maya Angelou
the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.— Maya Angelou
Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.— Maya Angelou
I would welcome a friendship with Lynne Hinton. I would welcome an invitation to sit down at her table, but mostly I would welcome her next book.— Maya Angelou
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.— Maya Angelou
I've had rainbows in my clouds.— Maya Angelou
A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.— Maya Angelou
If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.— Maya Angelou
Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize.— Maya Angelou
The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.— Maya Angelou
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.— Maya Angelou
I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.— Maya Angelou
I know that you that you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. If you accept that you have been defeated, you give power to the force that is trying to defeat you.— Maya Angelou
It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back.— Maya Angelou
The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness.— Maya Angelou
The area where we are the greatest is the area in which we inspire, encourage and connect with another human being.— 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.— Maya Angelou
This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths.— Maya Angelou
We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom.— Maya Angelou
To know and not to do is in fact not to know. We need to be active instruments against evil. We need to do.— Maya Angelou
I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK.— Maya Angelou
The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.— Maya Angelou
In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'— Maya Angelou
The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness.— Maya Angelou
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.— Maya Angelou
Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun!— Maya Angelou
Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud.— Maya Angelou
Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.— Maya Angelou
If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.— Maya Angelou
You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.— Maya Angelou
Exchange love for hate ... Thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.— Maya Angelou
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.— Maya Angelou
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.— Maya Angelou
I would ask every man and every woman who's had the blessing of having children, 'Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?' To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, 'I forbid you from loving this person'?— Maya Angelou
I try to see every day as a celebration.— Maya Angelou
Your voice at times a fist— Maya Angelou
Tight in your throat
Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms
In the room,
Your hand a carved and
Skimming boat
Goes down the Nile
To point out Pharaoh's tomb.
You're Africa to me
At brightest dawn.
The Congo's green and
Copper's brackish hue,
A continent to build
With Black Man's brawn.
I sit at home and see it all
Through you.
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.— Maya Angelou
They who have health have hope; and they who have hope, have everything.— Maya Angelou
What I think it really means is: I'm a teacher. I am a teacher. I teach all the time, as you do and as all of you do-whether we know it or not, whether we take responsibility for it or not. I hold nothing back because I want to see that light go off. I like to see the children say, 'I never thought of that before.' And I think, 'I've got them!'— Maya Angelou
Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.— Maya Angelou
When old folks laugh,— Maya Angelou
they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.
be a rainbow in someone else's cloude— Maya Angelou
Therefore we pledge to bind— Maya Angelou
ourselves to one another, to embrace
our lowliest, to keep company with
our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,
to feed our starving, to clothe our
ragged, to do all good things,
knowing that we are more than
keepers of our brothers and sisters.
We are our brothers and sisters
You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it.— Maya Angelou
I keep hitting the escape button but I am still here!— Maya Angelou
Girl, you're going to be all right. You haven't forgotten the essentials. You know about defending yourself. All you have to do now is remember ... sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself.— Maya Angelou
The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history.— Maya Angelou
I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things ...— Maya Angelou
