Maya Angelou Quotes
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401. “In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.”

— Maya Angelou

402. “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

403. “In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.”

— Maya Angelou

404. “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

405. “Shakespeare must be a black girl.”

— Maya Angelou

406. “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

407. “Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.”

— Maya Angelou

408. “While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.”

— Maya Angelou

409. “Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.”

— Maya Angelou

410. “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

411. “If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war?”

— Maya Angelou

412. “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

413. “Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all.”

— Maya Angelou

414. “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

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

— Maya Angelou

416. “When people see the laughing face, even if they’re jealous of it, their burden is lightened. But do it first for yourself. Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself.”

— Maya Angelou

417. “We must be warriors in the struggle against ignorance.”

— Maya Angelou

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

— Maya Angelou

419. “Having courage does not mean we are unafraid.”

— Maya Angelou

420. “I’m young as morning and fresh as dew. Everybody loves me and so do you.”

— Maya Angelou

421. “You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‘I’m a representative. ’”

— Maya Angelou

422. “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

— Maya Angelou

423. “Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.”

— Maya Angelou

424. “If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.”

— Maya Angelou

425. “When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement.”

— Maya Angelou

426. “I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?”

— Maya Angelou

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

— Maya Angelou

428. “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

429. “It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history.”

— Maya Angelou

430. “Don’t hesitate to learn the most painful aspects of our history, understand it.”

— Maya Angelou

431. “Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.”

— Maya Angelou

432. “Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.”

— Maya Angelou

433. “It’s hard because people think they have something to lose and the truth is they have everything to gain in trying to love somebody.”

— Maya Angelou

434. “I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.”

— Maya Angelou

435. “And one of my absolute favorite quotes of all-time, one that I’ve adopted as one of my greatest life mottos: Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.””

— Maya Angelou

436. “And if a person is religious, I think it’s good, it helps you a bit. But if you’re not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.”

— Maya Angelou

437. “That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.”

— Maya Angelou

438. “Hope does not take away your problems. It can lift you above them.”

— Maya Angelou

439. “My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.”

— Maya Angelou

440. “The truth will lead me to all.”

— Maya Angelou

441. “The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects – nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs – ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I’m most happy to be a writer.”

— Maya Angelou

442. “To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.”

— Maya Angelou

443. “I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.”

— Maya Angelou

444. “Courage, I don’t think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That’s not courage.”

— Maya Angelou

445. “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

446. “Oh, the holiness of being the injured party.”

— Maya Angelou

447. “A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true.”

— Maya Angelou

448. “I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.”

— Maya Angelou

449. “I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me – I didn’t know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn’t know it then, and I know more now.”

— Maya Angelou

450. “Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad.”

— Maya Angelou