Maya Angelou Inspirational Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Nothing will work unless you do.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

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.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

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

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 love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

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!

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.

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

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again and bring the dawn.

I know why the caged bird sings.

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.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

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.

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.

I am a child of God. I always carry that with me.

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I would forever have power over it.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that's me.

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

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

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.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

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

I sustain myself with the love of family.

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.

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

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

You can never be great at anything unless you love it.

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

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

When you know better you do better.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

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.

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

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

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

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

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

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

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

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.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.

Life loves the liver of it.

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

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

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.

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

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.

We need much less than we think we need.

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

I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

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