Maya Angelou

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

Hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Appearances matter – and remember to smile.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

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.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

Some people are stuck on who I was that who I am never even had a chance.