Maya Angelou Quotes
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I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.
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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.
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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.
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I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me 'I love you.' … There is an African saying which is: 'Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.'
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If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.
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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.
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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.
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Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
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If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
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I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.
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If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.
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A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.
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The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.
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The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
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If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
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We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.
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The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
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There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
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History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
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Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.'
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I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.
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I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.
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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.
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I believe that every person is born with talent.