Maya Angelou Quotes

Few, if any, survive their teens.

~ Maya Angelou

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.

~ Maya Angelou

Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.

~ Maya Angelou

When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here

~ Maya Angelou

No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone.

~ Maya Angelou

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

If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it’s almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. 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. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up.

~ Maya Angelou

remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.

~ Maya Angelou

Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

~ Maya Angelou

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

~ Maya Angelou

A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy, a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.

~ Maya Angelou

We wear the mask that grins and lies.It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.This debt we pay to human guileWith torn and bleeding hearts…We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.Why should the world think otherwiseIn counting all our tears and sighs.Nay let them only see us whileWe wear the mask.

~ Maya Angelou

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

~ Maya Angelou

When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

~ Maya Angelou

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

~ Maya Angelou

It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians, and blues singers).

~ Maya Angelou

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.

~ Maya Angelou

If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?

~ Maya Angelou

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

~ Maya Angelou

There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream.

~ Maya Angelou

They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you.

~ Maya Angelou

Trust your brain to suggest a solution, then have the courage to follow through.

~ Maya Angelou

I want you to write down your blessings.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

~ Maya Angelou

This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.

~ Maya Angelou

I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.

~ 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.

~ Maya Angelou

If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.

~ Maya Angelou

I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since.

~ Maya Angelou

I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

~ Maya Angelou

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

~ Maya Angelou

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.

~ Maya Angelou

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

~ Maya Angelou

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

~ Maya Angelou

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

~ Maya Angelou