Skip links

Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Maya Angelou (1928–2014,) born Marguerite Ann Johnson, was an African-American poet, author, singer, dancer, playwright, director, actor, professor, and civil rights activist. Her seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry chronicled the African American experience in literature.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970,) Angelou’s first autobiography, told the story of her life up to the age of seventeen. Angelou’s account of her harrowing childhood in Arkansas, her segregation in southern schools, and the beginning of her relationship with literature brought her international recognition and acclaim.

In January 1993, at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, Angelou became the second poet, the first African-American, and the first woman to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. She wrote and recited the poem “On the Pulse of Morning” to emphasize unity, social change, and public responsibility.

Angelou inspired generations of fans with her enthusiasm to share the wisdom she acquired from the struggle of her childhood of abuse, the oppression in the American Deep South in the 1930s, and her early adult experiences.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Maya Angelou

Recommended Reading

Inspirational Quotes by Maya Angelou (American Poet)

The needs of society determine its ethics.
—Maya Angelou

I sustain myself with the love of family.
—Maya Angelou

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Anger, Fun

It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don’t think it will come back.
—Maya Angelou

The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible.
—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
Topics: Despair

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.
—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
Topics: Family

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Love

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
Topics: Virtue, Courage, Potential, Ethics

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Gift

Courage is the most important of all the virtues … 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

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Lust For, Life

Live life as if it were created just for you.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Living

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Women, Feminism

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
—Maya Angelou

Ask For What You Want And Be Prepared To Get It.
—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

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
—Maya Angelou

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Solitude, Isolation

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Simple Living, Change, Simplicity

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.
—Maya Angelou

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Children

I don’t believe an 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.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Brothers

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

I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, “I love you.” There is an African saying which is: “Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
—Maya Angelou

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends, and living our lives
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Worry

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.”
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Nature

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Success & Failure, Accomplishment

Education helps one cease being intimidated by strange situations.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Oddity, Education, Peculiarity

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
Topics: Worry, Tolerance, Travel

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Achieving, Achievement

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I’m not certain what the difference is, but I do know that if you butt your head against a stone wall long enough, at some point you realize the wall is stone and that your head is flesh and blood.
—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
Topics: Words

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Compassion, Belief

Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Work

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
—Maya Angelou

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
—Maya Angelou

The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Graduation

It is the belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Belief

Wondering Whom to Read Next?