Maya Angelou

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good morning at total strangers.

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.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

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

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.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is women.

A man told me that for a woman, I was very opinionated. I said ‘For a man, you’re kind of ignorant.

I never identified with the feminist movement in a strong way. I just kind of lived it. I didn’t politicize it. I didn’t follow any written rules to what it meant to be a feminist. I had my own sense of what was right and wrong.

I’ve been at so many tables with so many folks who are imposters. But shame on us if we sit by and let an imposter talk us down.

I’ve come into loving and understanding the feminine side of me. How powerful a woman and her femininity is… how strong, how graceful, how gorgeous, how beautiful. I love getting to know the many sides of myself. I embrace them all.

The woman who doesn’t require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.

There’s a long, long history of women suffering abuse, injustice, and not having the same opportunities as men, and I think that’s been very detrimental to the human race as a whole.

I advise young women: Negotiate hard and know your worth.

If we want our daughters to dream bigger than we did we still have work to do.

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

Today, be the basass girl you were too lazy to be yesterday.

And to all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

Our first job in life as women, I think, is to get to know ourselves. And I think a lot of times we don’t do that. We spend our time pleasing, satisfying, looking out into the world to define who we are – listening to the messages, the images, the limited definitions that people have of who we are.

No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens.

The argument that ‘boys will be boys’ actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behaviors from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect.