110+ Maya Angelou Quotes On Success, Education And Friendship

Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. She is also known for her poems, which include "Phenomenal Woman" and "Still I Rise". Following is our collection on famous quotes by Maya Angelou on life, success, education.

Top 10 Maya Angelou Quotes

1. 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.
2. If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.
3. Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
4. Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself.
5. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
6. Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
7. If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
8. We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
9. You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.
10. Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay.

Maya Angelou Image Quotes

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

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

Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay. — Maya Angelou

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them. — Maya Angelou

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet. — Maya Angelou

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. — Maya Angelou

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant. — Maya Angelou

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

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. — Maya Angelou

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it. — Maya Angelou

When you know better you do better. — Maya Angelou

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

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength. — Maya Angelou

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

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. — Maya Angelou

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. — Maya Angelou

I am the dream and the hope of the slave — Maya Angelou

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. — Maya Angelou

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time. — Maya Angelou

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Short Quotes

• The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
• Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
• You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
• Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.
• When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
• Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
• If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.
• I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
• When you know better you do better.
• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou Quotes About Life

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

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. — Maya Angelou

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being. — Maya Angelou

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

When you learn, teach, when you get, give. — Maya Angelou

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. — Maya Angelou

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. — Maya Angelou

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. — Maya Angelou

This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before. — Maya Angelou

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Success

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. — Maya Angelou

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. — Maya Angelou

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise. — Maya Angelou

Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you... yet, someone survived... You can do anything you choose to do. — Maya Angelou

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between. — Maya Angelou

Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all. — Maya Angelou

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style. — Maya Angelou

We love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we're the same. — Maya Angelou

Success is loving life and daring to live it. — Maya Angelou

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Education

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

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. — Maya Angelou

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me. — Maya Angelou

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations. — Maya Angelou

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack. — Maya Angelou

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. — Maya Angelou

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure. — Maya Angelou

We must create a climate where people agree that human beings are more alike than unalike. The only way to do that is through education. — Maya Angelou

Education is a process that goes on 'til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you're in the company of an ignoramus. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Friendship

A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face. — Maya Angelou

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. — Maya Angelou

Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. — Maya Angelou

There is an intimate laughter to be found only among friends — Maya Angelou

I certainly do not adore the writer's discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually is to be found only in the minds of people about to be executed in the next half hour. — Maya Angelou

I would welcome a friendship with Lynne Hinton. I would welcome an invitation to sit down at her table, but mostly I would welcome her next book. — Maya Angelou

No one can take the place of a friend, no one. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Gratitude

Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. — Maya Angelou

If you have done the best you can do and if you have gotten all you could extract from something, you have given all you had to give, then the time has come when you can do no more than say thank you and move on. — Maya Angelou

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. — Maya Angelou

If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed. — Maya Angelou

The children to whom we read simple stories may or may not show gratitude, but each boon we give strengthens the pillars of the world. — Maya Angelou

I come as one, but stand as 10,000. — Maya Angelou

Preach it, I say preach it. — Maya Angelou

I did what I knew.. when I knew better, I did better — Maya Angelou

We are loved by Love itself. There is nothing good that we can't do. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Courage

Courage: 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

Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. — Maya Angelou

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

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

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

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive — Maya Angelou

You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated. — Maya Angelou

Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage mean we face our fears. We are able to say, 'I have fallen, but I will get up.' — Maya Angelou

You have to have courage to love somebody. Because you risk everything. Everything. — Maya Angelou

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Beauty

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. — Maya Angelou

I sustain myself with the love of family. — Maya Angelou

Number of things happen after I was 50. One, you are hopefully secure in what you want to do - which means that you don't spend a lot of time chewing on your knuckles about your reason for being here.Also, you're at your most beautiful. No woman is ever more beautiful than she is at 50. — Maya Angelou

You can ask goodness in, show it how much you like it, make room for it. And it says, "Oh, I like this place, I think I'll stay here." Which is why people go into one house and say, "I want to take my shoes off." At another house, no matter how beautiful it is, they might say, "Hmm, I can't stay." — Maya Angelou

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. — Maya Angelou

I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. — Maya Angelou

There's something beautiful about the fact that Obama was not just elected, but elected decisively across racial, and socio-economic and cultural groups and that we all celebrated in his win. — Maya Angelou

Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything. — Maya Angelou

Look for the beauty in things. — Maya Angelou

Home is a refuge not only from the world, but a refuge from my worries, my troubles, my concerns. I like beautiful things around me. I like to be beautiful because it delights my eyes and my soul is lifted up. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Aging

I love living. I love that I'm alive to love my age. There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn't wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did. I love, too, that I know a little more today than I did yesterday, or I simply know it more profoundly. — Maya Angelou

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. — Maya Angelou

When I passed forty I dropped pretense, 'cause men like women who got some sense. — Maya Angelou

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. — Maya Angelou

To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit. — Maya Angelou

Look what you've already come through! Don't deny it. Say I'm stronger than I thought I was — Maya Angelou

Continue to plant a kiss of concern on the cheek of the sick and the aged and infirm and count that actions as natural and to be expected. — Maya Angelou

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet. — Maya Angelou

I'm sorry to say that when some people get to age 50, they say, "Well, that's the end, I'll never have to do sex again." They lay down first and get up last! But in your sixties, everything is sweeter. You have more time. — Maya Angelou

Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Diversity

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 are not our brother’s keeper we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community. — Maya Angelou

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams. — Maya Angelou

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Inspiring

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within. — Maya Angelou

No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again and bring the dawn. — Maya Angelou

People will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou

Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg. — Maya Angelou

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. — Maya Angelou

I am the dream and the hope of the slave — Maya Angelou

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. — Maya Angelou

Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art. — Maya Angelou

I'm a feminist. I've been a female for a long time now. It'd be stupid not to be on my own side. — Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Moving

I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think is the right thing, I will not do it. — Maya Angelou

The truth is you never can leave home. You take it with you everywhere you go. It's under your skin. It moves the tongue or slows it, colors the thinking, impedes upon the logic. — Maya Angelou

Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About People

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

Happiness is a chance to talk to a friend, to hear good music, to have a good glass of wine. Happiness is a chance to be myself and to find people with whom I agree or who I don't agree but I can learn something. — Maya Angelou

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. — Maya Angelou

Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening. — Maya Angelou

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. — Maya Angelou

Don't bring negative to my door. — Maya Angelou

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt. — Maya Angelou

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. — Maya Angelou

Don't trust people who don't laugh. I don't. — Maya Angelou

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Love

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate - thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising. — Maya Angelou

Continue. Be loving and be strong. Be fierce and be kind. And don't give in and don't give up.' — Maya Angelou

We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share. — Maya Angelou

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists. — Maya Angelou

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. — Maya Angelou

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine. — Maya Angelou

Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, 'Just a minute. I'm worth everything, dear.' — Maya Angelou

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time. — Maya Angelou

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. — Maya Angelou

It's amazing. I can do anything. And do it well. Any good thing, I can do it. That's why I am who I am, yes, because God loves me and I'm amazed at it. I'm grateful for it. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Person

You don't need another person, place or thing to make you whole. God already did that. Your job is to know it. — Maya Angelou

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. — Maya Angelou

A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream. — Maya Angelou

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. — Maya Angelou

I believe that every person is born with talent. — Maya Angelou

In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. — Maya Angelou

It is important that we learn humility, which says there was someone else before me who paid for me. My responsibility is to prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who is yet to come. — Maya Angelou

I am a very religious person, so it is the presence of God, the constant unwavering, unrelenting presence of God which continues to help me to keep a character which I am proud to show. — Maya Angelou

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

The difference between charity and philanthropy is the distance of the soul... To be philanthropic is to give something, to be charitable is to give one's own heart. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Quotes About Write

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come. — Maya Angelou

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow. — Maya Angelou

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

When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise. — Maya Angelou

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. — Maya Angelou

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.' — Maya Angelou

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

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. — Maya Angelou

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication. — Maya Angelou

Nathaniel Hawthorne once said that easy reading is damn hard writing. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay. — Maya Angelou

Precious jewel, you glow, you shine, reflecting all the good things in the world. Just look at yourself. — Maya Angelou

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet. — Maya Angelou

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. — Maya Angelou

A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself — Maya Angelou

If you are going down a road and don't like what's in front of you, and look behind you and don't like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path! — Maya Angelou

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant. — Maya Angelou

Forgiveness. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that. — Maya Angelou

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

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. — Maya Angelou

Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike. — Maya Angelou

God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments - can see a possibility of hope. — Maya Angelou

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it. — Maya Angelou

When you know better you do better. — Maya Angelou

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

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength. — Maya Angelou

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

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. — Maya Angelou

Every day I awaken I am grateful. My intent is to be totally present in that day. And laugh as much as possible. — Maya Angelou

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? — Maya Angelou

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth. Why is truth so hard to believe? — Maya Angelou

I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. — Maya Angelou

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

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops. — Maya Angelou

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. — Maya Angelou

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

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. — Maya Angelou

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

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

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom. — Maya Angelou

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. — Maya Angelou

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. — Maya Angelou

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. — Maya Angelou

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence -- neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish -- it is an imponderably valuable gift. — Maya Angelou

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. — Maya Angelou

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult. — Maya Angelou

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare. — Maya Angelou

I am the dream and the hope of the slave — Maya Angelou

I'm grateful to be an American. I am grateful that we can be angry at the terrorist assault and at the same time be intelligent enough not to hold a grudge against every Arab and every Muslim. — Maya Angelou

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. — Maya Angelou

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

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. — Maya Angelou

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous. — Maya Angelou

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time. — Maya Angelou

I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute. — Maya Angelou

I am serious, so I laugh a lot. You need to laugh. You don't laugh enough. I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. — Maya Angelou

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. — Maya Angelou

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. — Maya Angelou

When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better. — Maya Angelou

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

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

The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken. — Maya Angelou

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

Life Lessons by Maya Angelou

1. Maya Angelou taught us to be resilient and to never give up on our dreams, no matter how hard life may seem. She also showed us that we can overcome adversity and that our past does not have to define us.
2. She also showed us the importance of self-love and self-acceptance, and that we should always strive to be the best version of ourselves.
3. Lastly, she taught us to be kind and compassionate to others, and to always stand up for what is right.