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Maya Angelou Quotes

Maya Angelou was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made around 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family and travel. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. April 1928 – 28. May 2014  •  Other names مایا انجیلو, 瑪雅安傑盧
Maya Angelou photo

Works

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Letter to My Daughter
And Still I Rise
And Still I Rise
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou: 247 quotes132 likes

Famous Maya Angelou Quotes

“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.”

Maya Angelou

Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

Maya Angelou

“When you learn, teach, when you get, give.”

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes about love

“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.”

Maya Angelou

“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.”

Maya Angelou

“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.”

Maya Angelou

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me "I love you."”

Maya Angelou

The Distinguished Annie Clark Tanner Lecture, 16th-annual Families Alive Conference, Weber State University, May 8, 1997 - Full text online at weber.edu http://departments.weber.edu/chfam/familiesalive/angelouspeech.html3 <br class="br">Context: I don&#x27;t trust people who don&#x27;t love themselves and tell me &quot;I love you.&quot; … There is an African saying which is: &quot;Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.&quot;

“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it;
to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.”

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes about life

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Misattributed
Source: This is actually from Zora Neale Hurston, <i>Dust Tracks On the Road,</i> though it is widely attributed to Ms. Angelou's book, <i>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.</i>

“I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.”

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou: Trending quotes

Maya Angelou quote: “I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.”

“I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.”

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

Maya Angelou Quotes

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Variant: Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.
Source: Letter to My Daughter

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”

Maya Angelou

“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”

Maya Angelou

“At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

This is a very close paraphrase of a quotation attributed to Carl Buehner in a book published many years earlier - “They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.” quoted in Richard Evans' Quote Book, 1971, Publisher's Press, ASIN: B000TV5WBW, although it is widely (mis)attributed to Angelou in her book Worth Repeating: More Than 5,000 Classic and Contemporary Quotes (2003) by Bob Kelly, p. 263,
Misattributed
Variant: People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

“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

Maya Angelou quote: “Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”

Maya Angelou

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

&quot;Still I Rise&quot; - Full text online at poets.org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15623 <br class="br">And Still I Rise (1978)

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.”

Maya Angelou

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”

Maya Angelou

Nearly identical quote attributed to a 1995 TV show, Touched by an Angel https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0732136/quotes: Tess: No, hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it&#x27;s never solved one yet. <br class="br">Misattributed

“I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me.”

Maya Angelou

“What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

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

Maya Angelou

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

“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.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.”

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

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

Maya Angelou

Variant: Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

“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.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible…We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

Maya Angelou

“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within”

Maya Angelou

Variant: Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

“You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”

Maya Angelou

Quoting her mother's statement after her son's birth, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

“I have need of a friend.

There is one and only one
who will give the air
from his failing lungs
for my body's mend.

And that one is my love.”

Maya Angelou book I Shall Not Be Moved

"Many and More"
I Shall Not Be Moved (1990)

“Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.”

Maya Angelou

in Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou (2014), p. 68

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.")”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

Maya Angelou

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

“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 of you.”

Maya Angelou

“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.”

Maya Angelou

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”

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

“You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise"
And Still I Rise (1978)
Context: You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

“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.”

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

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

Maya Angelou

“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”

Maya Angelou

Source: Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer

“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

“I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.”

Maya Angelou

Variant: I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

“We need much less than we think we need.”

Maya Angelou

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”

Maya Angelou

“Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.”

Maya Angelou

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