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

Inspirational Quotes by Maya Angelou (American Poet)

The love of the family, the love of the person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
—Maya Angelou

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Love

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Dance

When a person shows you who they really are, believe them.
—Maya Angelou

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Giving

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.
—Maya Angelou

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Home

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

When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness… all the good things.
—Maya Angelou

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
—Maya Angelou

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women

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

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: Feminism, Women

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

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Home

I believe talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Talent

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Loneliness

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Children

Nothing will work unless you do.
—Maya Angelou

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

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

The needs of society determine its ethics.
—Maya Angelou

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, Simplicity, Change

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catchers mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Helping

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Love

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
—Maya Angelou
Topics: Mentoring, Role models, Feelings, People

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

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