50 Famous Quotes Of Maya Angelou

1. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
5. My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
6. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
7. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
8. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
9. Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.
13. 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.
14. My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.
15. A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.
16. I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.
17. You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'
18. Nothing will work unless you do.
19. You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
20. One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
21. I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.
22. It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.
23. I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.
24. It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
25. In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
26. Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
27. 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.
28. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
29. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
30. Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
31. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
32. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
33. Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.
34. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
35. I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
36. 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.
37. If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.
41. Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
42. I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.
43. 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.
44. If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
45. Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.
46. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
47. We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.
48. 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.
49. I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
50. All great achievements require time.