Top 500 Maya Angelou Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Tell the truth and not the facts.”

— Maya Angelou

352. “There’s racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We’ve had bad news as a species for a long time. We’ve had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.”

— Maya Angelou

353. “The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.”

— Maya Angelou

354. “My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.”

— Maya Angelou

355. “Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‘That’s life.’”

— Maya Angelou

356. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

— Maya Angelou

357. “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

358. “Poetry helps my soul escape its encasement.”

— Maya Angelou

359. “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.”

— Maya Angelou

360. “Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.”

— Maya Angelou

361. “Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.”

— Maya Angelou

362. “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 heck we should never teach.”

— Maya Angelou

363. “There is a spirit in all music, the spirit has the ability to conjure up thoughts even pictures of something that happened or you wished would happen or you anticipate happening. Music has the ability to create ideas in you and me. It has the ability to encourage us to be creative.”

— Maya Angelou

364. “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.”

— Maya Angelou

365. “My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.”

— Maya Angelou

366. “Modesty is a learned affectation. It’s no good. Humility is great, because humility says, ‘There was someone before me. I’m following in somebody’s footsteps.’”

— Maya Angelou

367. “Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.”

— Maya Angelou

368. “Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet.”

— Maya Angelou

369. “The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.”

— Maya Angelou

370. “Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory.”

— Maya Angelou

371. “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.”

— Maya Angelou

372. “If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.”

— Maya Angelou

373. “I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life .”

— Maya Angelou

374. “I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”

— Maya Angelou

375. “Let us live so we do not regret years of inertia and ignorance, so when we die we can say all of our energy was dedicated to the noble liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.”

— Maya Angelou

376. “We have it in us to be splendid.”

— Maya Angelou

377. “If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”

— Maya Angelou

378. “The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library.”

— Maya Angelou

379. “You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.’”

— Maya Angelou

380. “Rainbows are people whose lives are bright, shining examples for others.”

— Maya Angelou

381. “If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.”

— Maya Angelou

382. “Shakespeare must be a black girl.”

— Maya Angelou

383. “In spite of everything that was done to me and my race, in spite of the adversity and the bitter moments, again we rise.”

— Maya Angelou

384. “My pride had been starched by a family who assumed unlimited authority in its own affairs.”

— Maya Angelou

385. “Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage: you have to have courage to love somebody because you risk everything-ever ything.”

— Maya Angelou

386. “If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world?”

— Maya Angelou

387. “I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.”

— Maya Angelou

388. “When I was asked to do something good, I often say yes, I’ll try, yes, I’ll do my best. And part of that is believing, if God loves me, if God made everything from leaves to seals and oak trees, then what is it I can’t do?”

— Maya Angelou

389. “Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.”

— Maya Angelou

390. “Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt.”

— Maya Angelou

391. “We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!”

— Maya Angelou

392. “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

393. “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

394. “This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth.”

— Maya Angelou

395. “You’re not serious; you’re boring as hell.”

— Maya Angelou

396. “Every Day you should reach out and touch someone.”

— Maya Angelou

397. “To be human is to be challenged to be more divine. Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable.”

— Maya Angelou

398. “Let the brain go to work, let it meet the heart and you will be able to forgive.”

— Maya Angelou

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

— Maya Angelou

400. “We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”

— Maya Angelou