Maya Angelou
Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.Collection: Dreams
Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.Collection: Communication
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.Collection: Attitude
All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.Collection: Truth
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.Collection: Alone
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.Collection: Courage
I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.Collection: Respect
Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.Collection: Independence
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.Collection: Men
Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.Collection: Mom
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.Collection: Thankful
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.Collection: Food
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.Collection: Home
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Respect
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.Collection: Courage
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.Collection: Courage
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Age
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.Collection: Truth
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.Collection: Beauty
Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.Collection: Age
I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.Collection: Experience
Life loves the liver of it.Collection: Life
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.Collection: Life
I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.Collection: Music
In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.Collection: Movies
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.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Respect
I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.Collection: Life
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.Collection: Technology
If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.Collection: Funny
All great achievements require time.Collection: Time
At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.Collection: Smile
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Respect
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.Collection: Mom
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.Collection: Life
I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business.Collection: Business
Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'Collection: History
In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.Collection: Love
Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.Collection: Success
I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Funny
Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.Collection: Courage
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: God
I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.Collection: Hope