Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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

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Inspirational Quotes by Maya Angelou (American Poet)

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

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
Maya Angelou
Topics: Information, Truth

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

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou
Topics: Entrepreneurs

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

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

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou
Topics: Friendship

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

Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate, to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers and sisters.
Maya Angelou
Topics: Humanity

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

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

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

Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya Angelou

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: People, Mentoring, Role models, Feelings

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

You want me to do something—tell me I can’t do it.
Maya Angelou

Some people unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.
Maya Angelou
Topics: Intelligence, School

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

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: Belief, Compassion

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.
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: Isolation, Solitude

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

When it looked like the sun wasn’t going to shine any more, there’s a rainbow in the clouds.
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

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

How important it is to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes.
Maya Angelou

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

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

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

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