Maya Angelou Quotes

Maya Angelou Quotes

1. A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

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

3. 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.

4. Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

5. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

6. Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.

7. I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

8. I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

9. 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.

10. I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

11. I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

12. 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.

13. I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

14. I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.

15. 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.

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

17. If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.

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

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

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

21. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

22. Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’

23. Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

24. Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

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

26. My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

27. My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

28. Nothing will work unless you do.

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

30. Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

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

32. The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

33. The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

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

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

36. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.

37. 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.

38. We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men. We are who we are because they were who they were.

39. We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

40. We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

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

42. We need much less than we think we need.

43. What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness.

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

45. You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

46. 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.

47. 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.

48. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

49. You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

50. Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.