Maya Angelou is an American writer who survived a childhood that was full of struggles. In her early adulthood, she became a singer, an activist, writer and actress. She became more popular in 1993 after she recited a poem, which she personally composed for the President of America’s inauguration during that time, President Bill Clinton.
Born on 4th of April 1928, Maya Angelou, whose real name is Marguerite Annie Johnson, was also known as a dancer, singer, playwright, historian and author. She was prominent for his autobiographical volumes that focused on her childhood experiences. With her brilliant pieces, it’s never a surprise to have some of the quotes and verses to stand out. Here are some of the best Maya Angelou quotes that I’ve listed down there for you. I hope you find some inspiration upon reading her inspirational quotes about love, life, education and so on. Enjoy!
Famous Maya Angelou Quotes
Quotes from Maya Angelou, best Maya Angelou quotes
If you don’t like something, change it.
If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
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.
Bitterness is like cancer.
It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire.
It burns it all clean.
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.
There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.
Facts can obscure truth.
There is no greater agony than
Bearing an untold story inside you.
Music was my refuge.
I could crawl into the space between the notes
And curl my back to loneliness.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper.
It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
Success is liking yourself,
Liking what you do,
And liking how you do it.
The needs of society determine its ethics.
Effective action is always unjust.
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer,
It sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou Quotes on Love
Maya Angelou love quotes, love quotes from Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers.
It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls
To arrive at its destination full of hope.
Love is like a virus.
It can happen to anybody at any time.
Love is that condition in the human spirit
So profound that it allows me to survive,
And better than that,
To thrive with passion, compassion, and style.
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.
If you have only one smile in you
Give it to the people you love.
The need for change bulldozed
A road down the center of my mind.
If we lose love and self respect for each other,
This is how we finally die.
There is a very fine line between
Loving life and being greedy for it.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it
And it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
Maya Angelou Inspirational Quotes
Inspirational quotes by Maya Angelou,
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.
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.
Nothing will work unless you do.
All great achievements require time.
It is time for parents
To teach young people early on that in diversity
There is beauty and there is strength.
The ache for home lives in all of us,
The safe place where we can go as we are
And not be questioned.
The main thing in one’s own private world
Is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
You may encounter many defeats,
But you must not be defeated.
In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats,
So you can know who you are, what you can rise from,
How you can still come out of it.
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress.
Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
Maya Angelou Friendship Quotes
When someone shows you who they are,
Believe them the first time.
The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.
Don’t be surly at home,
Then go out in the street
And start grinning “Good morning” at total strangers.
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.
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told,
‘I’m with you kid.
Let’s go.
I have found that among its other benefits,
Giving liberates the soul of the giver.
I want all my senses engaged.
Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness.
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else,
You will have succeeded.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
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 Quotes on Life
Maya Angelou quotes on education, Maya Angelou quotes on women
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.
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.
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.
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.
Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived,
But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
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.
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible
If their ideals are threatened.
Most plain girls are virtuous
Because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
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