Maya Angelou

Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

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

This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.

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!

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

Nothing will work unless you do.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

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.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

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

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

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

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.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

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

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

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

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

I was motivated to be different in part because I was different.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

I say I am stronger than fear.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Nothing has been more common in history than for victims to become oppressors when they gain power.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.