Quotes from Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings.

I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

If you dont like something, change it. If you cant change it, change your attitude.

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

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

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.

Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud.

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

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.

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.

There is a place in you that you must keep inviolate, a place that you must keep clean. A place where you say to any intruder, "Back up, don't you know I'm a child of God."

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love.

Forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise.

I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.

It was wonderful to receive from my President, the Freedom Award and to know that I am a member of the group most recently bought and sold with everybody's agreement, and the people who longed for freedom. When I accepted that award, I thought of all the people who had come from all over the world to find freedom in the United States. I accepted the award for African Americans, every slave who got off every boat, every European, and every Asian who came here searching for freedom.

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

I have a certain way of being in this world, and I shall not, I shall not be moved.

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

I believe that each of us comes from the creator trailing wisps of glory.

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life.

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

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

I long for the time when all the human history is taught as one history, because it really is one history.