MAMaya Angelou

279 collected words

Maya Angelou

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Maya Angelou / quote

02Undated

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 / quote

03Undated

You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother - yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.

Maya Angelou / quote

04Undated

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.

Maya Angelou / quote

05Undated

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.

Maya Angelou / quote

06Undated

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.

Maya Angelou / quote

07Undated

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

Maya Angelou / quote

08Undated

On this platform of peace, we can create a languageto translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

Maya Angelou / quote

09Undated

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Maya Angelou / quote

10Undated

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

Maya Angelou / quote

11Undated

All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.Yet I embrace you openly.Ripe with expectancy.

Maya Angelou / quote

12Undated

The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.

Maya Angelou / quote

13Undated

The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough- or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment- or even terrifying, is she so attractive her sons begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her. If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates she has rejected or has been rejected by her mate. Yet she is raising children who will become mates. Beyond her door, all authority is in the hands of people who do not look or think or act like her children. Teachers, doctors, sales, clerks, policemen, welfare workers who are white and exert control over her family’s moods, conditions and personality, yet within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door, or a ring in the telephone, can be exposed as false. In the face of this contradictions she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.

Maya Angelou / quote

14Undated

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.

Maya Angelou / quote

15Undated

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.

Maya Angelou / quote

16Undated

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 / quote

17Undated

We need to develop courage, and we need to develop it in small ways first..... You develop a little courage, so that if you decide, "I will not stay in rooms where women are belittled; I will not stay in company where races, no matter who they are, are belittled; I will not take it; I will not sit around and accept dehumanising other human beings: - if you decide to do that in small ways, and you continue to do it - finally you realize you've got so much courage. Imagine it - you've got so much courage that people want to be around you. They get a feeling that they will be protected in your company.

Maya Angelou / quote

18Undated

There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Maya Angelou / quote

19Undated

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.

Maya Angelou / quote

20Undated

Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.

Maya Angelou / quote

21Undated

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

Maya Angelou / quote

22Undated

To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.

Maya Angelou / quote

23Undated

I am a WomanPhenomenally.Phenomenal Woman,that's me.

Maya Angelou / quote

24Undated

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration.

Maya Angelou / quote