Maya Angelou

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.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

When you know better you do better.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We’d go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I’ve always been a big animal person.

We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents, are their most important role models.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

They say that every child learns from their mother – it’s ingrained from babyhood.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

I have so much more to go through as a young lady. But oh my God. I feel like I can do anything.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.