Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Her groundbreaking autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” published in 1969, brought her international acclaim for its candid exploration of race, identity, and resilience. Angelou’s literary works often drew from her own experiences of trauma, discrimination, and triumph, resonating deeply with readers around the world. Beyond her writing, she was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, working alongside leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Angelou’s eloquent prose, powerful poetry, and unwavering advocacy for social justice made her a beloved and influential voice in American literature and culture. She received numerous awards and honors throughout her lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010. Maya Angelou passed away on May 28, 2014, but her legacy continues to inspire generations.
Maya Angelou Quotes
01. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
— Maya Angelou
02. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
—Maya Angelou
03. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
—Maya Angelou
04. “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
—Maya Angelou
05. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
—Maya Angelou
06. “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
—Maya Angelou
07. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
—Maya Angelou
08. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
09. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”
—Maya Angelou
10. “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”
—Maya Angelou
11. “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”
—Maya Angelou
12. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
—Maya Angelou
13. “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
14. “If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”
—Maya Angelou
15.”I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.”
—Maya Angelou
16. “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”
—Maya Angelou
17. “My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.”
—Maya Angelou
18. “All great achievements require time.”
—Maya Angelou
19. “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
—Maya Angelou
20. “I did work in a strip club, but I didn’t strip. I danced, and I became very popular.”
—Maya Angelou
21. “The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”
—Maya Angelou
22. “I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.”
—Maya Angelou
23.”How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”
—Maya Angelou
24.”Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.”
—Maya Angelou
25. “I got my own back.”
—Maya Angelou
26. “The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”
—Maya Angelou
27. “I work very hard, and I play very hard. I’m grateful for life. And I live it – I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.”
—Maya Angelou
28. “There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
—Maya Angelou
29. “I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.”
—Maya Angelou
30. “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
—Maya Angelou
31. “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
—Maya Angelou
32. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
33. “Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.'”
—Maya Angelou
34. “We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.”
—Maya Angelou
35. “During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.”
—Maya Angelou
36. “I got my own back.”
—Maya Angelou
37. “The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”
—Maya Angelou
38. “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
39. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
—Maya Angelou
40. “Nothing will work unless you do.”
—Maya Angelou
41. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
—Maya Angelou
42. “I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”
—Maya Angelou
43. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
—Maya Angelou
44. “I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.”
—Maya Angelou
45. “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”
—Maya Angelou
46. “A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”
—Maya Angelou
47. “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
48. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
49. “Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”
—Maya Angelou
50. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
51. “The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.”
—Maya Angelou
52. “If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”
—Maya Angelou
53. “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
—Maya Angelou
54. “What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.”
—Maya Angelou
54. “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
—Maya Angelou
55. “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”
—Maya Angelou
56. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
57. “There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”
—Maya Angelou
58. “It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.”
—Maya Angelou
59. “Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”
—Maya Angelou
60. “Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall in love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”
—Maya Angelou
61. “Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.”
—Maya Angelou
62. “I believe that every person is born with talent.”
—Maya Angelou
63. “All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.”
—Maya Angelou
64. “I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”
—Maya Angelou
65. “I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”
—Maya Angelou
66. “I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.”
—Maya Angelou
67. “I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.”
—Maya Angelou
68. “Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.”
—Maya Angelou
69. “Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.”
—Maya Angelou
70. “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
71. “In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”
—Maya Angelou
72. “In all my work, I try to say – ‘You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?”
—Maya Angelou
73. “When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.”
—Maya Angelou
74. “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
75. “It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.”
—Maya Angelou
76. “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
—Maya Angelou
77. “Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”
—Maya Angelou
78. “While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.”
—Maya Angelou
79. “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
80. “I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.”
—Maya Angelou
81. “You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.'”
—Maya Angelou
82. “I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‘mother wit’ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.”
—Maya Angelou
83. “Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.”
—Maya Angelou
84. “I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.”
—Maya Angelou
85. “Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.”
—Maya Angelou
86. “I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.”
—Maya Angelou
87. “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”
—Maya Angelou
88. “Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.”
—Maya Angelou
89. “We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!”
—Maya Angelou
90. “Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.”
—Maya Angelou
91. “I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.”
—Maya Angelou
92. “All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”
—Maya Angelou
93. “I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”
—Maya Angelou
94. “There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”
—Maya Angelou
95. “What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.”
—Maya Angelou
96. “The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.”
—Maya Angelou
97. “The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.”
—Maya Angelou
98. “Life loves the liver of it.”
—Maya Angelou
99. “We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”
—Maya Angelou
100. “I created myself. I have taught myself so much.”
—Maya Angelou
101. “Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!”
—Maya Angelou
102. “I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I always think, ‘Already? You’ve already got it?’ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.”
—Maya Angelou
103. “Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.”
—Maya Angelou
104. “I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.”
—Maya Angelou
105. “If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.”
—Maya Angelou
106. “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
107. “At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.”
—Maya Angelou
108. “Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.”
—Maya Angelou
109. “Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‘Run like hell and all of fire.’ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.”
—Maya Angelou
110. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
111. “You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‘I’m a representative.'”
—Maya Angelou
112. “The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.”
—Maya Angelou
113. “In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.”
—Maya Angelou
114. “Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'”
—Maya Angelou
115. “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.”
—Maya Angelou
116. “I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.”
—Maya Angelou
117. “I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.”
—Maya Angelou
118. “Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”
—Maya Angelou
119. “Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.”
—Maya Angelou
120. “I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.”
—Maya Angelou
121. “My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.”
—Maya Angelou
122. “The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.”
—Maya Angelou
123. “Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. It doesn’t give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.”
—Maya Angelou
124. “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
125. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou,
126. “What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”
― Maya Angelou
127. “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
― Maya Angelou
128. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou
129. “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
― Maya Angelou
130. “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
131. “I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
― Maya Angelou
132. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou
133. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
― Maya Angelou
134. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou
135. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
― Maya Angelou
136. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
― Maya Angelou
137. “Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”
― Maya Angelou
138. “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.”
― Maya Angelou
139. “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
― Maya Angelou
140. “Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.”
― Maya Angelou
141. “A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”
― Maya Angelou
142. “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”
― Maya Angelou
143. “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
― Maya Angelou
144. “Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”
― Maya Angelou
145. “If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?”
― Maya Angelou
146. “Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”
― Maya Angelou
147. “Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. ”
― Maya Angelou
148. “No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
― Maya Angelou
149. “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
150. “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise!”
― Maya Angelou
151. “We need much less than we think we need.”
― Maya Angelou
152. “When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
― Maya Angelou
153. “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
― Maya Angelou
154. “I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.”
― Maya Angelou
