Maya Angelou Quotes

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

~ Maya Angelou

When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep

~ Maya Angelou

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

~ Maya Angelou

The“b” word and the “n” word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison.

~ Maya Angelou

The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.

~ Maya Angelou

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

~ Maya Angelou

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.

~ Maya Angelou

That day, I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person. The ensuing years have taught me that a kind word, a vote of support is a charitable gift. I can move over and make another place for someone. I can turn my music up if it pleases, or down if it is annoying. I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources.

~ Maya Angelou

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.

~ Maya Angelou

This bed yawnsbeneath the weightof our absent selves.

~ Maya Angelou

I'm young as morningand fresh as dew.Everybody loves meand so do you.

~ Maya Angelou

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

~ Maya Angelou

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

~ Maya Angelou

I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.

~ Maya Angelou

Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.

~ Maya Angelou

You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens....loudly screamed....Trying to change our nightmares into dreams...

~ Maya Angelou

Lovers think quite different thoughtswhile lying side by side.

~ Maya Angelou

You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I’ll rise.

~ Maya Angelou

Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

~ Maya Angelou

In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons. The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for.

~ 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. He must believe his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit.

~ Maya Angelou

Ignorance is a terrible thing. It causes families to lose their center and causes people to lose their control. Ignorance knows no binds. Old people, young people, middle-aged, black, white, can all be ignorant.

~ Maya Angelou

The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?

~ Maya Angelou

I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself.

~ Maya Angelou

Love. And again, see I don't mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars in the firmament, I'm not sure. It may be the energy which keeps the blood running smoothly through our veins. I'm not sure, but it's something beyond the explanation. It can be used for anything you can explain. Any good thing you can explain.

~ Maya Angelou

Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.

~ Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I'm telling lies.I say,It's in the reach of my armsThe span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl of my lips.I'm a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.I walk into a roomJust as cool as you please,And to a man,The fellows stand orFall 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 womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.Men themselves have wonderedWhat they see in me.They try so muchBut they can't touchMy inner mystery.When I try to show themThey 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 womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.Now you understandJust why my head's not bowed.I don't shout or jump aboutOr have to talk real loud.When you see me passingIt 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 womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

~ Maya Angelou

You don’t want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I’m here because I’ve been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I’m paying for someone else who has yet to come.

~ Maya Angelou

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

~ Maya Angelou

This a a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.

~ Maya Angelou

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

~ Maya Angelou

Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ 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

Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.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 things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.[…]We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

~ Maya Angelou

...one can never leave home...one carries the shadows, the dreams, the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes...

~ Maya Angelou

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

~ Maya Angelou

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

~ Maya Angelou