Maya Angelou Quotes

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

~ Maya Angelou

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.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, 'I'm a representative.'

~ Maya Angelou

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.'

~ Maya Angelou

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.

~ Maya Angelou

Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

~ Maya Angelou

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!

~ Maya Angelou

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.

~ Maya Angelou

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

~ Maya Angelou

I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

~ 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

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

~ Maya Angelou

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

~ Maya Angelou

Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

~ Maya Angelou

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

~ 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 educated and more intelligent than college professors.

~ Maya Angelou

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

~ Maya Angelou

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you.

~ Maya Angelou

Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.

~ Maya Angelou

Life loves the liver of it.

~ Maya Angelou

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

~ Maya Angelou

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

~ Maya Angelou

I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.

~ Maya Angelou

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

~ 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

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.

~ Maya Angelou

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

~ Maya Angelou

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

~ Maya Angelou

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

~ Maya Angelou

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

~ Maya Angelou

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

~ 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 long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

~ Maya Angelou

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'

~ Maya Angelou

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.

~ Maya Angelou