Maya Angelou Quotes

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

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

Shelter Network's programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

When you know better you do better.

The whites were really brutishly ignorant, blitheringly, so they killed people sometimes - just came into the African-American community and maimed people because they didn't agree with God's choice for the colors of the people's skin.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

We are only as blind as we want to be.

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.

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

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.

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

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

Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

Being physically close to extreme power causes one to experience a giddiness, an intoxication.

It is very dangerous to make a person larger than life because, then, young men and women are tempted to believe, well, if he was that great, he's inaccessible, and I can never try to be that or emulate that or achieve that.

If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility.

Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.

I try to see every day as a celebration.

The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

The truth brings the past into the present and prepares us for the future. That's what truth does

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.

We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It's all right if we do a little robbing now.

When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.

You can ask goodness in, show it how much you like it, make room for it. And it says, "Oh, I like this place, I think I'll stay here." Which is why people go into one house and say, "I want to take my shoes off." At another house, no matter how beautiful it is, they might say, "Hmm, I can't stay."

We can only know where we're going if we know where we've been.

Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage: you have to have courage to love somebody because you risk everything-ever ything.

Sunday, if I'm lucky, I'll go to church or listen to some good spiritual advice on the television or on the radio. I take three or four baths to try to cleanse myself, so I'm fresh for Monday.

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.

All God's children need traveling shoes.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

If you have, give. If you learn, teach.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

Effective action is always unjust.

Reduce your humanity through what Jules Feiffer called little murders. The minute I hear someone trying to demean me, I know that that person means to have my life. And I will not give it to them. When a person commits these little murders, and then you catch him or her at it, he or she might say, "Oh, I didn't mean it." But make no mistake: It is an assassination attempt.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

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.

I get up in the morning, and I'm reluctant to turn on the television.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.

Look heavenward and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud. Peace.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be okay. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me. So I have a special place for every library, in my heart of hearts.