Maya Angelou Quotes
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451. “Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains.”

— Maya Angelou

452. “The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness.”

— Maya Angelou

453. “A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.”

— Maya Angelou

454. “I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.”

— Maya Angelou

455. “We are the victims of the world’s most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It’s all right if we do a little robbing now.”

— Maya Angelou

456. “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

457. “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

458. “The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.”

— Maya Angelou

459. “Do not be wedded forever to fear, yoked eternally to brutishness.”

— Maya Angelou

460. “I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.”

— Maya Angelou

461. “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

462. “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

463. “If men are God’s gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts.”

— Maya Angelou

464. “Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.”

— Maya Angelou

465. “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

466. “When I passed forty I dropped pretense, ’cause men like women who got some sense.”

— Maya Angelou

467. “I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.”

— Maya Angelou

468. “In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.”

— Maya Angelou

469. “Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise.”

— Maya Angelou

470. “Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

— Maya Angelou

471. “Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody’s clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.”

— Maya Angelou

472. “The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.”

— Maya Angelou

473. “I think that that’s the wisest thing – to prevent illness before we try to cure something.”

— Maya Angelou

474. “Everything costs and costs the earth.”

— Maya Angelou

475. “Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.”

— Maya Angelou

476. “It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.”

— Maya Angelou

477. “We must infuse our lives with art. Our national leaders must be informed that we want them to use our taxes to support street theatre in order to oppose street gangs. We should have a well-supported regional theatre in order to oppose regionalism and.”

— Maya Angelou

478. “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

479. “Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are.”

— Maya Angelou

480. “The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.”

— Maya Angelou

481. “When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‘Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.’”

— Maya Angelou

482. “Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don’t understand but something I’m able to harness and use.”

— Maya Angelou

483. “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

484. “The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, ‘Thank you, Lord!’ I’m grateful to be alive, and I’m going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it.”

— Maya Angelou

485. “Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.”

— Maya Angelou

486. “The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US – in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.”

— Maya Angelou

487. “Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”

— Maya Angelou

488. “Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.”

— Maya Angelou

489. “When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep.”

— Maya Angelou

490. “The intensity with which young people live demands that they “blank out” as often as possible.”

— Maya Angelou

491. “Take the blinders from your vision take the padding from your ears and confess you’ve heard me crying and admit you’ve seen my tears.”

— Maya Angelou

492. “Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection – children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren’t nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless.”

— Maya Angelou

493. “The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.”

— Maya Angelou

494. “I don’t think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It’s a learned affectation.”

— Maya Angelou

495. “One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person.”

— Maya Angelou

496. “My people had used music to soothe slavery’s torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance its way to freedom.”

— Maya Angelou

497. “Shelter Network’s programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.”

— Maya Angelou

498. “I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.”

— Maya Angelou

499. “If you happen to fall in love with someone in another race, it’s more difficult, because you have to translate yourself.”

— Maya Angelou

500. “Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‘I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.’ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‘Yes, I deserve it.’”

— Maya Angelou