Skip to content
Maya Angelou
Quotes by Maya Angelou
Quotes by Maya Angelou
“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”
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
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
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
“If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”
Maya Angelou
“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
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
“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.”
Maya Angelou
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
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
“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”
Maya Angelou
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
Maya Angelou
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Maya Angelou
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
Maya Angelou
“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”
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
“Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”
Maya Angelou
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
Maya Angelou
“One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
Maya Angelou
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”
Maya Angelou
“All great achievements require time.”
Maya Angelou
“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”
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
“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
“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.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
Maya Angelou
“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”
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
“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”
Maya Angelou
“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
Maya Angelou
