Maya Angelou Quotes

You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you're gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship.

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted.

To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty.

When women take care of their health they become their own best friend.

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you'll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.

My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her 50 years ago and still do.

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

But still, like air, I'll rise

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

There is something more - the spirit, or the soul. I think that that quality encourages our courtesy and care and our minds. And mercy, and identity.

I keep hitting the escape button but I am still here!

Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay.

I have great respect for the past.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. 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 some things back.

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

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

You may be pretty or plain, heavy or thin, gay or straight, poor or rich. But remember this: In an election, every voice is equally powerful -- don't underestimate your vote. Voting is the great equalizer.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.'

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

I believe everything is energy. I believe that the meal you serve yourself, you prepare, is energy. And if you serve it to your family, it's your gift of energy to them.

A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

Age is nothing; waking up is everything.

Because of our routines we forget that life is an ongoing adventure.

I certainly do not adore the writer's discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually is to be found only in the minds of people about to be executed in the next half hour.

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

We all have that possibility, that potential and that promise of seeing beyond the seeming.

It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can't do anything with that except do it.

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.

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.

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

Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight, and courage and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible.

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.

The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history.

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.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

Naturally, if you love somebody, you do want to see their face every now and again, but that's not a condition of your love. People often get possession mixed up with love, and they say, "If you really loved me, you would call me." How - when life is going on? I think of you all the time, and the thought of you always lifts my spirits. But I'm not right at the phone!

The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, 'Thank you, Lord!' I'm grateful to be alive, and I'm going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music.

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.

I want to be representative of my race-the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be.

I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time.

Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right.