Maya Angelou Quotes

259 Sourced Quotes

The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.

Maya Angelou
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

Maya Angelou
The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

Maya Angelou
When I passed forty I dropped pretense, 'cause men like women who got some sense.

Maya Angelou
I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year.

Maya Angelou
The music was my friend, my lover, my family.

Maya Angelou
I'm startled or taken aback when people walk up to me and tell me they are Christians. My first response is the question 'Already?'

Maya Angelou
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Maya Angelou
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.

Maya Angelou
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
It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth.

Maya Angelou
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.

Maya Angelou
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Maya Angelou
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Maya Angelou
All people use food for more reasons than pure nutrition.

Maya Angelou
Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

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

Maya Angelou
They've laughed to shield their crying
then shuffled though the dreams
and stepped 'n fetched a country
to write the blues with screams.

Maya Angelou
Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.

Maya Angelou
We agreed that great men and women should be forced to live as long as possible. The reverence they enjoyed was a life sentence, which they could neither revoke nor modify.

Maya Angelou
If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

Maya Angelou
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

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
People are too busy putting things under microscopes. Creativity is more than the sum of its parts.

Maya Angelou
The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful.

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

Maya Angelou