Maya Angelou quote: "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."

In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to li...
MAYA ANGELOU

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
MAYA ANGELOU

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

Encouragement to all women is - let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to...
MAYA ANGELOU

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some com...
MAYA ANGELOU

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
MAYA ANGELOU

Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white...
MAYA ANGELOU

Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beau...
MAYA ANGELOU

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it ove...
MAYA ANGELOU

In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church j...
MAYA ANGELOU

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when...
MAYA ANGELOU

I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.
MAYA ANGELOU

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their h...
MAYA ANGELOU

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.
MAYA ANGELOU

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.
MAYA ANGELOU

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'...
MAYA ANGELOU

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.
MAYA ANGELOU

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human bein...
MAYA ANGELOU

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only a...
MAYA ANGELOU

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been livi...
MAYA ANGELOU

I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And ...
MAYA ANGELOU

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of '...
MAYA ANGELOU

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
MAYA ANGELOU

All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible t...
MAYA ANGELOU

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
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 b...
MAYA ANGELOU

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to Californ...
MAYA ANGELOU

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
MAYA ANGELOU

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become u...
MAYA ANGELOU

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can...
MAYA ANGELOU

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't w...
MAYA ANGELOU

I got my own back.
MAYA ANGELOU

If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will a...
MAYA ANGELOU

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.'...
MAYA ANGELOU

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continui...
MAYA ANGELOU

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.
MAYA ANGELOU

Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. Y...
MAYA ANGELOU

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, ac...
MAYA ANGELOU

I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a...
MAYA ANGELOU

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.
MAYA ANGELOU

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You hav...
MAYA ANGELOU

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry,...
MAYA ANGELOU

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some p...
MAYA ANGELOU

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!'...
MAYA ANGELOU

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and su...
MAYA ANGELOU

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
MAYA ANGELOU

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin...
MAYA ANGELOU

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone ...
MAYA ANGELOU

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I d...
MAYA ANGELOU

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you w...
MAYA ANGELOU

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to ...
MAYA ANGELOU

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.
MAYA ANGELOU

Nothing will work unless you do.
MAYA ANGELOU

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
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 was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.
MAYA ANGELOU

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth...
MAYA ANGELOU

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
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 sacr...
MAYA ANGELOU

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any...
MAYA ANGELOU

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'
MAYA ANGELOU

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very...
MAYA ANGELOU

Bitterness is cancer - it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its disple...
MAYA ANGELOU

I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying t...
MAYA ANGELOU

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
MAYA ANGELOU

We all need the waters of the Mercy River. Though they don't run deep, there's usually enough, just ...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

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

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.
MAYA ANGELOU

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise...
MAYA ANGELOU

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change ...
MAYA ANGELOU

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achie...
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

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer t...
MAYA ANGELOU

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

(Popular misquo...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go o...
MAYA ANGELOU

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
MAYA ANGELOU

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will...
MAYA ANGELOU

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
MAYA ANGELOU

When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
li...
MAYA ANGELOU

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any oth...
MAYA ANGELOU

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
MAYA ANGELOU

I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African sa...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the br...
MAYA ANGELOU

A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
MAYA ANGELOU

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go...
MAYA ANGELOU

When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.
MAYA ANGELOU

We need much less than we think we need.
MAYA ANGELOU

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
MAYA ANGELOU

What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise...
MAYA ANGELOU

If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act o...
MAYA ANGELOU

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encoun...
MAYA ANGELOU

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go.
MAYA ANGELOU

Life loves the liver of it.
MAYA ANGELOU

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
MAYA ANGELOU

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories
MAYA ANGELOU

...there is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I
MAYA ANGELOU

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, ...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go o...
MAYA ANGELOU

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over whi...
MAYA ANGELOU

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence -- neither speed up nor slow down,...
MAYA ANGELOU

I believe that every person is born with talent.
MAYA ANGELOU

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's gre...
MAYA ANGELOU

Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
MAYA ANGELOU

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't per...
MAYA ANGELOU

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the be...
MAYA ANGELOU

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind o...
MAYA ANGELOU

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.
MAYA ANGELOU

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and ...
MAYA ANGELOU

It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don
MAYA ANGELOU

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I al...
MAYA ANGELOU

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes...
MAYA ANGELOU

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistanc...
MAYA ANGELOU

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but...
MAYA ANGELOU

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have th...
MAYA ANGELOU

All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if t...
MAYA ANGELOU

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
MAYA ANGELOU

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

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complai...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be...
MAYA ANGELOU

I answer the heroic question "Death, where is they sting?" with "It is here in my heart and mind and...
MAYA ANGELOU

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the thr...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain...
MAYA ANGELOU

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them sibling...
MAYA ANGELOU

The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more bl...
MAYA ANGELOU

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoe...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go ...
MAYA ANGELOU

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amaze...
MAYA ANGELOU

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
MAYA ANGELOU

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, p...
MAYA ANGELOU

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad itseems today, life does go on, and it will be ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, w...
MAYA ANGELOU

I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into ...
MAYA ANGELOU

When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace,love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.
MAYA ANGELOU

If men are God's gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts
MAYA ANGELOU

A woman's beauty is not a gift to man - only a bribe
MAYA ANGELOU

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
MAYA ANGELOU

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."
MAYA ANGELOU

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday ev...
MAYA ANGELOU

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know...
MAYA ANGELOU

I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that...
MAYA ANGELOU

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men de...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person...
MAYA ANGELOU

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amaze...
MAYA ANGELOU

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball the...
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

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are...
MAYA ANGELOU

I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and bel...
MAYA ANGELOU

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
MAYA ANGELOU

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Be...
MAYA ANGELOU

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bib...
MAYA ANGELOU

I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to h...
MAYA ANGELOU

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So ...
MAYA ANGELOU

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
MAYA ANGELOU

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

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are m...
MAYA ANGELOU

I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intell...
MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, ...
MAYA ANGELOU

I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scrip...
MAYA ANGELOU

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
MAYA ANGELOU

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I&#...
MAYA ANGELOU

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot -...
MAYA ANGELOU

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself ...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

All great achievements require time.
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't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I ...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. T...
MAYA ANGELOU

There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more ...
MAYA ANGELOU

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.
MAYA ANGELOU

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people ...
MAYA ANGELOU

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

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can...
MAYA ANGELOU

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.
MAYA ANGELOU

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life lo...
MAYA ANGELOU

I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
MAYA ANGELOU

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

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else'...
MAYA ANGELOU

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and...
MAYA ANGELOU

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessi...
MAYA ANGELOU

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we can...
MAYA ANGELOU

If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And y...
MAYA ANGELOU

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived...
MAYA ANGELOU

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaki...
MAYA ANGELOU

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been pai...
MAYA ANGELOU

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
MAYA ANGELOU

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

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