Maya Angelou Quotes

Maya Angelou (born 1928) is an African-American poet, author, actress, and civil rights activist. Her birth name is Marguerite Ann Johnson.

Angelou is best known for portrayals of strong African American women in her writings. In 1970, she published her first widely-acclaimed autobiographical book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". In 1971, she published her first volume of poetry "Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die", which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1993, at Bill Clinton's request, Angelou read her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" at his presidential inauguration.

May you be encouraged by these best of Maya Angelou quotes!

All great achievements require time.
-- Maya Angelou

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.
-- Maya Angelou

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.
-- Maya Angelou

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
-- Maya Angelou

Courage allows the successful woman to fail-
and learn powerful lessons-
from the failure-
so that in the end,
she didn't fail at all.
-- 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

Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you. All the other tangible rewards will come as a result.
-- Maya Angelou

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.
-- Maya Angelou

Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.
-- Maya Angelou

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.
-- Maya Angelou

I believe that every person is born with talent.
-- Maya Angelou

I can be changed by what happens to me. but I refuse to be reduced by it.
-- Maya Angelou

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.
-- Maya Angelou

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

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
-- Maya Angelou

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
-- Maya Angelou

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

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.
-- Maya Angelou

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
-- Maya Angelou

I’ve learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life".
-- 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

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.
-- Maya Angelou

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

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.
-- 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 the courage to accept the love in return.
-- 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 almost choke when I think about myself.
-- Maya Angelou

My mother was really telling me to go ahead and love life, to engage in it, give it all you've got. To love it with a passion.
-- 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

See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then you’ll do it without thinking.
-- 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

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

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
-- Maya Angelou

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
-- Maya Angelou

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.
-- Maya Angelou

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

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.
-- Maya Angelou

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
-- Maya Angelou

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