Maya Angelou

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

When you know better you do better.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

Be confident, not certain