Maya Angelou Quotes And Sayings

Life Loves To Be Taken By The Lapel And Told: 'I'm With You Kid. Let's Go.'

There Is A Very Fine Line Between Loving Life And Being Greedy For It.

Loving Someone Liberates The Lover As Well As The Beloved. And That Kind Of Love Comes With Age.

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.

I Believe We Are Still So Innocent. The Species Are Still So Innocent That A Person Who Is Apt To Be Murdered Believes That The Murderer, Just Before He Puts The Final Wrench On His Throat, Will Have Enough Compassion To Give Him One Sweet Cup Of Water.

I Wasn't A Pretty Girl. I Was Six Feet Tall At 15, You Know.

When I Write, I Tend To Twist My Hair. Something For My Small Mind To Do, I Guess.

The Love Of The Family, The Love Of One Person Can Heal. It Heals The Scars Left By A Larger Society. A Massive, Powerful Society.

All Great Artists Draw From The Same Resource: The Human Heart, Which Tells Us That We Are All More Alike Than We Are Unalike.

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.

The Best Comfort Food Will Always Be Greens, Cornbread, And Fried Chicken.

One Of The Wonderful Things About Oprah: She Teaches You To Keep On Stepping.

Easy Reading Is Damn Hard Writing. But If It's Right, It's Easy. It's The Other Way Round, Too. If It's Slovenly Written, Then It's Hard To Read. It Doesn't Give The Reader What The Careful Writer Can Give The Reader.

Everybody Born Comes From The Creator Trailing Wisps Of Glory. We Come From The Creator With Creativity. I Think That Each One Of Us Is Born With Creativity.

When Someone Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time.

Won't It Be Wonderful When Black History And Native American History And Jewish History And All Of U.s. History Is Taught From One Book. Just U.s. History.

It's Good To Remember That In Crises, Natural Crises, Human Beings Forget For Awhile Their Ignorances, Their Biases, Their Prejudices. For A Little While, Neighbors Help Neighbors And Strangers Help Strangers.

During Bad Circumstances, Which Is The Human Inheritance, You Must Decide Not To Be Reduced. You Have Your Humanity, And You Must Not Allow Anything To Reduce That. We Are Obliged To Know We Are Global Citizens. Disasters Remind Us We Are World Citizens, Whether We Like It Or Not.

Politicians Must Set Their Aims For The High Ground And According To Our Various Leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, We Will Follow. Politicians Must Be Told If They Continue To Sink Into The Mud Of Obscenity, They Will Proceed Alone.

In So Many Ways, Segregation Shaped Me, And Education Liberated Me.

The Loss Of Young First Love Is So Painful That It Borders On The Ludicrous.

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.

A Cynical Young Person Is Almost The Saddest Sight To See, Because It Means That He Or She Has Gone From Knowing Nothing To Believing Nothing.

Find A Beautiful Piece Of Art. If You Fall In Love With Van Gogh Or Matisse Or John Oliver Killens, Or If You Fall Love With The Music Of Coltrane, The Music Of Aretha Franklin, Or The Music Of Chopin - Find Some Beautiful Art And Admire It, And Realize That That Was Created By Human Beings Just Like You, No More Human, No Less.

Everyone Has At Least One Story, And Each Of Us Is Funny If We Admit It. You Have To Admit You're The Funniest Person You've Ever Heard Of.

Eating Is So Intimate. It's Very Sensual. When You Invite Someone To Sit At Your Table And You Want To Cook For Them, You're Inviting A Person Into Your Life.

I Think We All Have Empathy. We May Not Have Enough Courage To Display It.

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.

Love Recognizes No Barriers. It Jumps Hurdles, Leaps Fences, Penetrates Walls To Arrive At Its Destination Full Of Hope.

I Love The Melodies In The Old Testament, How Preachers Highlight Them When They Read From The Scripture. But I Was Influenced Forever By The New Testament. I Love The Beatitudes, Informing Us That The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth.

I Did Work In A Strip Club, But I Didn't Strip. I Danced, And I Became Very Popular.

I Never Had That Feeling That I Had To Carry The Weight Of Somebody's Ignorance Around With Me. And That Was True For Racists Who Wanted To Use The 'N' Word When Talking About Me Or About My People, Or The Stupidity Of People Who Really Wanted To Belittle Other Folks Because They Weren't Pretty Or They Weren't Rich Or They Weren't Clever.

At 50, I Began To Know Who I Was. It Was Like Waking Up To Myself.

Encouragement To All Women Is - Let Us Try To Offer Help Before We Have To Offer Therapy. That Is To Say, Let's See If We Can't Prevent Being Ill By Trying To Offer A Love Of Prevention Before Illness.

I Think Clinton, After Getting Into Office And Into Washington, Was Shocked At Being Bludgeoned. So He Spent Time Trying To Be All Things To All People - One Way Guaranteed Not To Be Successful Or Respected In A Lion's Den. You Can't Just Play Around With All Those Big Cats - You've Got To Take Somebody On.

When The Human Race Neglects Its Weaker Members, When The Family Neglects Its Weakest One - It's The First Blow In A Suicidal Movement. I See The Neglect In Cities Around The Country, In Poor White Children In West Virginia And Virginia And Kentucky - In The Big Cities, Too, For That Matter.

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.

I Refuse To Allow Any Man-made Differences To Separate Me From Any Other Human Beings.

If You Want What You're Saying Heard, Then Take Your Time And Say It So That The Listener Will Actually Hear It. You Might Save Somebody's Life. Your Own, First.

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.

I Like Chicken A Lot Because Chicken Is Generous - That Is To Say, It's Obedient. It Will Do Whatever You Tell It To Do.

There's A World Of Difference Between Truth And Facts. Facts Can Obscure The Truth.

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.

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.

One Of My Lungs Is Half Gone, And The Other Half, Because I Smoked For Years, Has A Lesion. So I Can't Swim Anymore And Had The Swimming Pool Covered Over. Now It's What I Call The Dance Pavilion, And So I And My Friends Sit Out And Put Music On And Watch People Dance.

At Fifteen Life Had Taught Me Undeniably That Surrender, In Its Place, Was As Honorable As Resistance, Especially If One Had No Choice.

It's One Of The Greatest Gifts You Can Give Yourself, To Forgive. Forgive Everybody.

For Africa To Me... Is More Than A Glamorous Fact. It Is A Historical Truth. No Man Can Know Where He Is Going Unless He Knows Exactly Where He Has Been And Exactly How He Arrived At His Present Place.

Most Plain Girls Are Virtuous Because Of The Scarcity Of Opportunity To Be Otherwise.

Bitterness Is Like Cancer. It Eats Upon The Host. But Anger Is Like Fire. It Burns It All Clean.