Maya Angelou

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.

We need much less than we think we need.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

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

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

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

The more you know, the less you need.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

All mankind love a lover.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Remember where you came from.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.