Top 500 Maya Angelou Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different.”

— Maya Angelou

302. “Time itself is an individual gift. It is wise to cherish it carefully and give it away generously.”

— Maya Angelou

303. “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

304. “People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant.”

— Maya Angelou

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

— Maya Angelou

306. “Step off the road. Build yourself a brand new path.”

— Maya Angelou

307. “Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude.”

— Maya Angelou

308. “Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.”

— Maya Angelou

309. “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

310. “One must learn to care for oneself first, so that one can then dare to care for someone else.”

— Maya Angelou

311. “Each of us has the power and responsibility to become a rainbow in the clouds.”

— Maya Angelou

312. “I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.”

— Maya Angelou

313. “We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.”

— Maya Angelou

314. “One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.”

— Maya Angelou

315. “The honorary duty of a human being is to love.”

— Maya Angelou

316. “At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.”

— Maya Angelou

317. “The future is plump with promise.”

— Maya Angelou

318. “I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.”

— Maya Angelou

319. “I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.”

— Maya Angelou

320. “You think you may not be heard. Speak anyway.”

— Maya Angelou

321. “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

322. “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

323. “Just as hope rings through laughter, it can also shine through tears.”

— Maya Angelou

324. “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

325. “It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can’t do anything with that except do it.”

— Maya Angelou

326. “We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”

— Maya Angelou

327. “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

328. “If we are honest and fair, then we are known by that. If we are not, alas, we are known by that as well. What we want to do is do right, but you have to say it, you have to show it, and not stop.”

— Maya Angelou

329. “All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.”

— Maya Angelou

330. “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

331. “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

332. “Raising kids is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.”

— Maya Angelou

333. “I think when we don’t know what to do it’s wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.”

— Maya Angelou

334. “Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.”

— Maya Angelou

335. “Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you’re gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship.”

— Maya Angelou

336. “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

337. “All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.”

— Maya Angelou

338. “When I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better.”

— Maya Angelou

339. “The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me. It’s fascinating because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for the overcoming.”

— Maya Angelou

340. “If our children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves.”

— Maya Angelou

341. “I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.”

— Maya Angelou

342. “Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.”

— Maya Angelou

343. “Because of our routines we forget that life is an ongoing adventure.”

— Maya Angelou

344. “When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.”

— Maya Angelou

345. “Everybody is worth everything.”

— Maya Angelou

346. “Take a month and show some kindness for the folks who thought that blindness was an illness that affected eyes alone.”

— Maya Angelou

347. “My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her 50 years ago and still do.”

— Maya Angelou

348. “Don’t let anybody raise you. You’ve been raised.”

— Maya Angelou

349. “The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labour.”

— Maya Angelou

350. “Look heavenward and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud. Peace.”

— Maya Angelou