Top 500 Maya Angelou Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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.”

— Maya Angelou

102. “Don’t let the man bring you down.”

— Maya Angelou

103. “No one can take the place of a friend, no one.”

— Maya Angelou

104. “We are only as blind as we want to be.”

— Maya Angelou

105. “We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.”

— Maya Angelou

106. “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

107. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

— Maya Angelou

108. “Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.”

— Maya Angelou

109. “Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.”

— Maya Angelou

110. “We are more alike than unalike.”

— Maya Angelou

111. “Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren’t, we should behave as though we are – cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.”

— Maya Angelou

112. “There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.”

— Maya Angelou

113. “There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

— Maya Angelou

114. “Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

— Maya Angelou

115. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

— Maya Angelou

116. “While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.”

— Maya Angelou

117. “The main thing in one’s own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.”

— Maya Angelou

118. “People will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou

119. “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

120. “At our best, we are all teachers.”

— Maya Angelou

121. “You may not remember what a person said to you, you may not remember what a person did to you, but you will never forget how a person made you feel!”

— Maya Angelou

122. “It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”

— Maya Angelou

123. “Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.”

— Maya Angelou

124. “Difficult is a far cry from impossible. The distance between these two lies hope. Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay.”

— Maya Angelou

125. “If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you will look forward, do so prayerfully. But the wisest course would be to be present in the present gratefully.”

— Maya Angelou

126. “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”

— Maya Angelou

127. “I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”

— Maya Angelou

128. “The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.”

— Maya Angelou

129. “Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.”

— Maya Angelou

130. “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

131. “When women take care of their health they become their own best friend.”

— Maya Angelou

132. “I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

— Maya Angelou

133. “Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.”

— Maya Angelou

134. “Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.”

— Maya Angelou

135. “Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.”

— Maya Angelou

136. “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.”

— Maya Angelou

137. “A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”

— Maya Angelou

138. “Ritie, don’t worry ’cause you ain’t pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.”

— Maya Angelou

139. “The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.”

— Maya Angelou

140. “Beneath the skin, beyond the differing features and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.”

— Maya Angelou

141. “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

142. “I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it.”

— Maya Angelou

143. “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

144. “I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.”

— Maya Angelou

145. “Thank you, always say thank you; it’s the greatest gift you can give someone; because thank you is what you say to God.”

— Maya Angelou

146. “When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor’s gift.”

— Maya Angelou

147. “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

148. “I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.”

— Maya Angelou

149. “I always felt, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK.”

— Maya Angelou

150. “Love liberates; it doesn’t bind.”

— Maya Angelou