Maya Angelou Quotes

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'

Maya Angelou

• Tradition
• Slave
• Autobiography

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Quotes to Explore

• 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
  • Important
  • Practice
  • Courage

• Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Born
  • Glory
  • Creator

• I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Great
  • Respect
  • Come From

• There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • World
  • Truth
  • Facts

• I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Long
  • Human being
  • Be At Home

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

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Future
  • Past
  • Present

• Nothing will work unless you do.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Work
  • Do

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

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Love
  • Hope
  • For Her

• If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Love
  • Respect
  • Die

• The needs of a society determine its ethics.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Society
  • Needs
  • Determine

• Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Book
  • History
  • Black

• And if a person is religious, I think it's good, it helps you a bit. But if you're not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Good
  • Religious
  • Condition

• I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • May
  • Courage
  • Empathy

• If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Important
  • Funny
  • Die

• We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!

  

  Maya Angelou
  • See
  • Ourselves
  • Rise

• 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
  • People
  • Feel
  • Forget

• The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • American
  • Hope
  • Black

• All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Information
  • Belong
  • Accessible

• To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • I Do
  • Bounce
  • Ball Up

• We grow despite the horror that we feed upon our own tomorrow. We grow.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Grow
  • Tomorrow
  • Horror

• 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
  • Knows
  • Place
  • Fact

• If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Fear
  • Bold
  • Souls

• Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear. I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • Hope
  • Fear
  • Leaving

• The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

  

  Maya Angelou
  • History
  • Know
  • Liberated