Recommended Reading
- ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings‘ by Maya Angelou
- ‘Mom & Me & Mom‘ by Maya Angelou
- ‘The Complete Collected Poems‘ by Maya Angelou
- ‘Letter to My Daughter‘ by Maya Angelou
- ‘Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now‘ by Maya Angelou
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?
Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
Annie Dillard American Writer
Amiri Baraka American Poet, Playwright
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
Robert W. Service Scottish Poet
Hans Christian Andersen Danish Author
George William Russell Irish Author
Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
Tobias Smollett Scottish Poet
Carrie Fisher American Actress