Maya Angelou was not just a civil rights activist, she was also an author and poet. The lady had a way with words for sure. Here we provide our best collection of Maya Angelou Quotes for boost your power and all these quotes definitely help you in your life.
also check- best mahatma gandhi quotes / best abraham lincoln quotes
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Maya Angelou Quotes
My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.
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 you.
My great blessing is my son, but I have daughters. I have white ones and Black ones and fat ones and thin ones and pretty ones and plain. I have gay ones and straight. I have daughters. I have Asian ones, I have Jewish ones, I have Muslim ones.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
I was told many years ago by my grandmother who raised me: If somebody puts you on a road and you don’t feel comfortable on it and you look ahead and you don’t like the destination and you look behind and you don’t want to return to that place, step off the road.
I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can’t ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won’t stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you’d be surprised that people say, “Can I be of help?”.
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 out and kick ass.
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
Inspirational Maya Angelou Quotes
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
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.
I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.
You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.
Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you… yet, someone survived… You can do anything you choose to do.
When I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better.
I’m really saddened by the attempts to separate and polarize. This is a time when we have hungry people, people out of work, and people out of spirit. This is a time where we need to uplift, not to separate.
On what she feels about the world today: I feel very hopeful, very expectant. I’m looking forward to it.
We need to not be in denial about what we’ve done, what we’ve come through. It will help us if we all do that.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness.
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody; if a human being dares to be Martin King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Malcolm X; if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born – it means so can you. And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself so you can internalize, ‘Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto. I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me.’ That’s one thing I’m learning.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Short Maya Angelou Quotes
Your belief and your work will speak for you.
Life loves the liver of it.
All great achievements require time.
Determine to live life with flair and laughter.
Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.
Effective action is always unjust.
We need much less than we think we need.
The honorary duty of a human being is to love.
When you learn, teach, when you get, give.
Everybody is worth everything.
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.
Funny Maya Angelou Quotes
The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library.
I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, ‘I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway.’
I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.
I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
I never have written every day. When I’m writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity.
My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.
Deep Maya Angelou Quotes
We are only as blind as we want to be.
You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.
Nobody can enjoy unless we all enjoy, truly enjoy.
Grace is like a lake of drinkable water right outside your door. But you stay inside and die of thirst.
We are not just flesh and blood. And our hungers are not going to be set aside as just flesh and blood.
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.
Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.
A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence, neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish, it is an imponderably valuable gift.
Maya Angelou Quotes About Life
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go’.
Human beings are more alike than unalike. Whether in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. We want healthy children, safe streets, to be loved and have the unmitigated gall to accept love.
Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
We can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into.
Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself.
I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.
I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.
If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war?
I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy.
Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I’d agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker – I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.
Maya Angelou Quotes About Family, Love And Relationship
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.
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. But if you’re in love with the thing, it may run like hell away from you.
When we find someone who is brave, fun, intelligent, and loving, we have to thank the universe.
It’s very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years.
If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Forgiveness. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that.
When people see the laughing face, even if they’re jealous of it, their burden is lightened. But do it first for yourself. Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself.
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
I believe that people want the scent of love, more than anything else. And I don’t mean sentimentality, I don’t mean mush. I mean that idea, that human beings are more alike than we are different.
It’s hard because people think they have something to lose and the truth is they have everything to gain in trying to love somebody.
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.
By love I don’t mean indulgence. I do not mean sentimentality. And in this instance, I don’t even mean romance. I mean that condition that allowed humans to dream of God. That condition that allowed the “dumb” to write spirituals and Russian songs and Irish lilts. That is love, and it’s so much larger than anything I can conceive.
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
If you happen to fall in love with someone in another race, it’s more difficult, because you have to translate yourself.
I’m convinced that the negative has power. It lives. And if you allow it to perch in your house, in your mind, in your life, it can take you over. So when the rude or cruel thing is said – the lambasting, the gay bashing, the hate – I say, “Take it all out of my house!” Those negative words climb into the woodwork and into the furniture, and the next thing you know they’ll be on my skin.
If you want to liberate someone, love them. Not be in love with them – that’s dangerous.
Maya Angelou Quotes About Success
I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.
You only are free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
I have enough of life in me to make somebody jealous enough to want to knock me down. I have so much courage in me that I have the effrontery, the incredible gall to stand up. That’s it. That’s how you get to know who you are.
Those who have something to say accept the fact that that’s lonely. One already knows that there will be adversaries.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
The only way you can be a mark is if you want something for nothing. If you’re greedy, you’re set up.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
If I’m here, I’ll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved.
Courage, I don’t think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That’s not courage.
We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are.
It is always about the work. In the latter years of your life, your happiness and your self-esteem will be determined by the mountains you surmounted, the valleys you climbed out of, and the life and/or career that you forged for yourself.
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
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 Quotes On womanhood
I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I’m a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself – all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.
The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.
A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.
Courage allows the successful woman to fail – and to learn powerful lessons from the failure – so that in the end, she didn’t fail at all.
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.
A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.
I am a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman that is your grandmother, that is your mother, that is your sister, that is you and that is me.
My mother had said me, “All right, you’ve been raised, so don’t let anybody else raise you. You know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. And remember – you can always come home.” And she continued to liberate me until she died.
On her mother: On the night she died, I went to the hospital. I told my mom, “Let me tell you about yourself. You deserved a great daughter, and you got one. And you liberated me to be one. So if it’s time for you to go, you may have done everything God brought you here to do.
When teachers or people in authority put me down or in one way or another tried to make me feel less than equal to what they thought I should be – my mother was on my side. It was amazing.
My mother raised me, and then freed me.