Maya Angelou

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

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.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

We need much less than we think we need.

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

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

What’s the point of having great knowledge and keeping them all to yourself?

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

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.