Maya Angelou Quotations | Page 3

I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

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.

Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility.

I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.

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

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can't do anything with that except do it.

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.

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.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they'll do wonders. I count on them.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well.

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.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it.

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.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!

Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything.

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.'

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

Lift up your eyes upon. This day breaking for you. Give birth again. To the dream.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.

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.

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it

love builds up the broken walland straigtens the crooked path.love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on te ocean tideseach of us is created of itand i suspecteach of us was created for it

Mrs. Parks is for me probably what the Statute of Liberty was for immigrants. She stood for the future, and the better future.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence -- neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish -- it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity to be otherwise

She's my sister friend and I pray for her and her children. Everybody, please give a good thought, a positive thought for Coretta.

She was a sister-friend to me, we called each other 'children sisters.' She was a great wife, obviously, and a wonderful mother and a great woman, a great American. When I think of great Americans she's one of the people I think of.

i believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare

I answer the heroic question "Death, where is they sting?" with "It is here in my heart and mind and memories.

I don't believe the accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.

Here on the pulse of this new day,/ You may have the grace to look up and out/ And into your sister's eyes, into/ Your brother's face, your country/ And say simply,/ Very simply,/ With hope,/ Good Morning.

Her passion was never spent in public display.

God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us- in the dreariest and most dreaded moments- can see a possibility of hope.

He loved her. ... she can be talking to me about regular things but when she mentions Martin, her voice always falls a little bit and you can sense the intimacy. ... The sweetness of that relationship was always evident.

Look at my life. I'm floating like mercury around the earth. My footprints shine with stardust. All because I love you. All because you love me.

I said, 'Don't worry about it -- I know our culture.'

kudos to the educators, athletes, dancers, judges, janitors, politicians, artists, actors, writers, singers, poets, and social activist, to all who dare to look at like with humor, determination and respect

I was thinking about that, about the journeys in the film, journey to the roots, journey to the heart. We're all on journeys.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

It is not the answer you look for that makes you strong. It's the ways that you take that define who you are and what you can do.

You did then what you knew how to do, And when you knew better, You did better.

Those of us who have gathered here, ... we owe something from this minute on, so this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history.

When it looked like the sun wasn't going to shine any more, there's a rainbow in the clouds,

No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again and bring the dawn.

If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.

When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace,love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.

When we cast our bread upon the waters, we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from that grantor's gift

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.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

At the worst of times, there's the possibility of seeing hope, ... That's why that song is so important right now.

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'

Someone was hurt before you; wronged before you; beaten before you; humiliated before you; raped before you; yet, someone SURVIVED

See, you dont have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then youll do it without thinking.

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

Some people unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.

You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may trod me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, I'll rise.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.

I know you very well, and I know you need a good English teacher.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

I'm not going anywhere. I came here to say something, and I'm not leaving until I'm finished.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

Then I went back to my mother when I was 13 and she was ready for me.

It's bleak because I can't - many of us can't hear her sweet voice - but it's great because she did live, and she was ours. I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking - she belonged to us and that's a great thing.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

It is the worst thing you can do, women, is whine, ... I mean the worst. Don't complain, protest.

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.

When a man tells you who he is...believe him.

It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was. It's bleak because I can't - many of us can't hear her sweet voice but it's great because she did live, and she was ours. I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking - she belonged to us and that's a great thing.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

When I say 'I am a Christian', I'm not shouting 'I'm saved'. I'm whispering 'I get lost'. That is why I chose this way...

Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.

Precious jewel, you glow, you shine, reflecting all the good things in the world. Just look at yourself.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

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.

We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share.

You want me to do something... tell me I can't do it.

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate - thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.

Forgiveness. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that.

This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.

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

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.