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Maya Angelou Quotes
1928–2014 United States
Maya Angelou (4 April, 1928 – 28 May, 2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American poet, author, memoirist, actress, director, producer, writer, singer, dancer, and civil rights activist.
United States 20th-century poets Activists Actresses Authors Also known as: Angelou, Maya, Maya angelou, Marguerite Annie Johnson
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67 quotes
Love recognizes no barriers.
Love's Exquisite Freedom (2011)
I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, "You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth."
Every Day a Word Surprises Me & Other Quotes by Writers by Phaidon (2018)
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
Misattributed
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Misattributed
People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
Misattributed
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song
Misattributed
I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes-it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
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