Maya Angelou: Poet, Writer, and Activist Biography

"Life loves the liver of it"

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude"

"While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man"

"Nothing will work unless you do"

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart"

"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"

"All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened"

"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud"

"All great achievements require time"

"Achievement brings its own anticlimax"

"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself"

"I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver"

"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"

"I believe that every person is born with talent"

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!"

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again"

"For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place"

"Effective action is always unjust"

"Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage"

"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives"

"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean"

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

"As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them"

"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"

"If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die"

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities"

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back"

"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"

"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength"

"If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love"

"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded"

"The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance"

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned"

"Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon"

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope"

"Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time"

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.""

"There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth"

"There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing"

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you"

"There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it"

"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"

"The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind"

"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"

"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"

"While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation"

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors"

"Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise"

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return"

"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"

Born as	Marguerite Ann Johnson
Occup.	Poet
From	USA
Born	April 4, 1928 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Age	96 years

Maya Angelou Biography

54 Famous quotes by Maya Angelou