She is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. She experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture. Dr. Angelou has been called “America’s most visible black female autobiographer”.
(1928 – 2014)
– Maya Angelou Quotes –
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
~ Maya Angelou
Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
~ Maya Angelou
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
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
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
~ Maya Angelou
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
~ Maya Angelou
I believe that every person is born with talent.
~ Maya Angelou
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
~ Maya Angelou
Life loves the liver of it.
~ Maya Angelou
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
~ Maya Angelou
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
~ Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.
~ Maya Angelou
Nothing will work unless you do.
~ Maya Angelou
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
~ Maya Angelou
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~ Maya Angelou
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
~ Maya Angelou
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
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
~ Maya Angelou
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.
~ Maya Angelou
There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
~ Maya Angelou
For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
~ Maya Angelou
All great achievements require time.
~ Maya Angelou
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
~ Maya Angelou
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
~ Maya Angelou
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
~ Maya Angelou
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.
~ Maya Angelou
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
~ Maya Angelou
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
~ Maya Angelou
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
~ Maya Angelou
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
~ Maya Angelou
