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Top Maya Angelou Quotes

Browse top 220 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Maya Angelou.

Favorite Maya Angelou Quotes

1. "If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide." ~ Maya Angelou
2. "On this platform of peace, we can create a languageto translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other." ~ Maya Angelou
3. "Segregation shaped me; education liberated me." ~ Maya Angelou
4. "Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us." ~ Maya Angelou
5. "We need much less than we think we need." ~ Maya Angelou
6. "When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed." ~ Maya Angelou
7. "When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things." ~ Maya Angelou
8. "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better." ~ Maya Angelou
9. "The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration." ~ Maya Angelou
10. "Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time." ~ Maya Angelou
11. "Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope." ~ Maya Angelou
12. "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." ~ Maya Angelou
13. "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." ~ Maya Angelou
14. "This bed yawnsbeneath the weightof our absent selves." ~ Maya Angelou
15. "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
16. "Soft you day, be velvet soft, My true love approaches, Look you bright, you dusty sun, Array your golden coaches.Soft you wind, be soft as silk My true love is speaking. Hold you birds, your silver throats, His golden voice I'm seeking.Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving." ~ Maya Angelou
17. "The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams." ~ Maya Angelou
18. "When you learn, teach, when you get, give." ~ Maya Angelou
19. "Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes." ~ Maya Angelou
20. "There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it." ~ Maya Angelou
21. "I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I know will always be true." ~ Maya Angelou
22. "Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite, forgive us, please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't have known. Of course I forgive you." ~ Maya Angelou
23. "Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us.We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous." ~ Maya Angelou
24. "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
25. "The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve." ~ Maya Angelou
26. "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." ~ Maya Angelou
27. "I walk into a roomJust as cool as you please,And to a man,The fellows stand orFall down on their knees." ~ Maya Angelou
28. "Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides." ~ Maya Angelou
29. "Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size." ~ Maya Angelou
30. "Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come." ~ Maya Angelou
31. "Preach it, I say preach it." ~ Maya Angelou
32. "All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market." ~ Maya Angelou
33. "Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness." ~ Maya Angelou
34. "No one mentioned his(Bailey's) absence as if things were as they should be and always were." ~ Maya Angelou
35. "I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire." ~ Maya Angelou
36. "Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant." ~ Maya Angelou
37. "Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time." ~ Maya Angelou
38. "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
39. "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult." ~ Maya Angelou
40. "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
41. "Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him." ~ Maya Angelou
42. "He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack." ~ Maya Angelou
43. "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
44. "I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?" ~ Maya Angelou
45. "You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off of you." ~ Maya Angelou
46. "You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody." ~ Maya Angelou
47. "People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed." ~ Maya Angelou
48. "Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women." ~ Maya Angelou
49. "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
50. "Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don't do that. Some day we'll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you." ~ Maya Angelou
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Today's Quote

I love Amy Adams. She is wonderful. Evan Rachel Wood is a blast. I am also really excited about Ari Graynor from 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist' and 'American Crime.' I think it is an exciting time for young women in this industry. I am excited to make my own path."
Author: Candice Accola

What Did Maya Angelou Talk About?

Ear
Thin
Hen
Wit
Able
Here
Tan
Per
Con
Self
Use
Ring
End
Hey
Each
Act
Hum
Ten
Hear
Body
May
Son
Ally
Lack
Low
Lie
Era
She
Black
Rate
Win
Lit
Word
Ways
Rage
Pen
Hang
Child
Cause
Less
King
Thou
Place
Sin
Words
Heart
Ape
Ours
Wing
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