Maya Angelou Quotes

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

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

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.

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

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

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.

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

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.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

I’ve learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life.".

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.

See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then you’ll do it without thinking.

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.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible and live long lives.

life is a gift, and i try to respond with grace and courtesy.

this is my life. it is my one time to be me. i want to experience every good thing.

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

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

All great achievements require time.

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

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

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.