Maya Angelou Quotes

259 Sourced Quotes

The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible.

Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Maya Angelou
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region's only enfranchised citizen.

Maya Angelou
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

Maya Angelou
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 acceptance.

Maya Angelou
All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.

Maya Angelou
I lay down in my grave
and watch my children
grow
Proud blooms
above the weeds of death.

Maya Angelou
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all.
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Maya Angelou
We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, "Oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away; I rose right where I'd been knocked down." That's how you get to know yourself.

Maya Angelou
You may not get what you paid for, but you will pay for what you get.

Maya Angelou
Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.

Maya Angelou
I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

Maya Angelou
Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains.

Maya Angelou
You're Africa to me
At brightest dawn.
The Congo's green and
Copper's brackish hue,
A continent to build
With Black Man's brawn.
I sit at home and see it all
Through you.

Maya Angelou
Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don't understand but something I'm able to harness and use.

Maya Angelou
Love liberates. It doesn't just hold, that's ego. Love liberates.

Maya Angelou
Being free is being able to accept people for what they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are.

Maya Angelou
Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.

Maya Angelou
Do not be wedded forever to fear, yoked eternally to brutishness.

Maya Angelou
I, with millions of other Americans, have the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. had; when I wake up I wish some of the things I dreamt would be true. I wish that little black and white boys and girls would hold hands without being shocked at their nearness to each other and say in a natural way, "we have overcome.

Maya Angelou
Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried tokens of their sojourn here on our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the form of dust and ages.

Maya Angelou
Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you're just stretching your soul.

Maya Angelou
In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.

Maya Angelou
I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I would forever have power over it.

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

Maya Angelou
Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

Maya Angelou
I'm very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick.

Maya Angelou
In order to win, we pay with energy and effort and discipline. If we lose, we pay in disappointment, discontent, and lack of fulfillment.

Maya Angelou
When my bones are stiff and aching
And my feet won't climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don't bring me no rocking chair.

Maya Angelou
The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me. It's fascinating because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for the overcoming.

Maya Angelou